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Entries in Intellectual Property (34)
Plaintiff Wins by Default Judgment in Copyright Infringement Case
The MPAA brought a lawsuit against TorrentSpy operators for copyright infringement in February of 2006. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California recently ruled in favor of the MPAA. A ruling on damages has yet to occur and TorrentSpy does plan to appeal. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the ruling is that it was not necessarily based on the merits of the MPAA’s case. Instead, the Judge issued a default judgment, declaring that the defendants destroyed evidence and that their conduct was “obstreperous.”
Marcia Sutton
in Claim Examples, Intellectual Property, Internet
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Copyright Infringement: Get ‘Em While They’re Young
This week’s issue of Forbes includes an article about the Entertainment Software Association’s development of a software game for kindergartners. The game is designed to teach the wee ones about copyright infringement. According to Forbes, this educational effort is the brainchild of the entertainment industry which seeks to thwart illegal downloading.
Marcia Sutton
in Intellectual Property
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Software & Information Industry Association Expanding Its Reach
You had better think twice before you send a copy of the great article you just read to your entire staff; you could end up entangled in copyright infringement litigation. A California-based market research company recently settled complaints brought against it by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). The company had been internally distributing a variety of third-party owned content including market research reports, news articles and other information. Many companies engage in the same practice and as a result, it doesn’t occur to most people to obtain permission or a license to use the content unless it is going to be used externally. Even if the disseminator of the content knew that technically they should obtain permission prior to use, it’s only being distributed internally, so who’s going to know? That position works fairly well, until one of your employees blows the whistle, which is exactly what happened in this case.
John Whall
in Claim Examples, Intellectual Property, Internet, MPL, Media, Tech
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LJ’s Top 5 List of What to Watch out For: Second Installment
Here’s another list of coverage provisions to watch for and closely evaluate. These particular provisions all relate to Tech Professional liability policies.
1. Copyright and Trademark infringement coverage should apply to covered services for others; marketing and selling of the insured’s own product and content on the insured’s website. Watch out for language limiting coverage to products and services for others.
Laura Johnson
in Exclusions, Intellectual Property, Security, Tech
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It’s Electric: DMCA Extends to Dance Moves
Bad news. Any video of your Euclid Managers underwriters doing the Electric Slide will probably not be appearing online any time soon. There may be a variety of reasons to keep the video hidden but, chiefly, those mad moves are copyrighted! And the copyright owner, Richard Silver, is filing complaints against YouTube and others for posting videos of dancers doing the Slide—poorly. Apparently the choreographer doesn’t want people learning or dancing his moves incorrectly. So, he is sending Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices.
Marcia Sutton
in Intellectual Property, Internet
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Linking Continues to Spur Litigation
A U.S. District court judge in Texas has recently decided that linking to a webcast violates the law, unless the copyright owner gives permission. Those publishers in Belgium that previously kept Google from legally linking to their articles are now making a similar case against Yahoo. These two examples show how problematic linking continues to be. And while sometimes scenarios regarding linking are unique to media companies, links are a feature common to essentially all websites.
Marcia Sutton
in Defamation, Intellectual Property, Internet
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Trademark Dilution Law Changes Not Good for Defendants
Eric Goldman , assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and a frequent blogger, sums up recent changes to trademark dilution laws in the U.S. by saying the bottom line is that the amendments are unfavorable for defendants in trademark dilution cases.
He believes defendants would benefit from a change requiring that the mark in a dilution case must be widely recognized in the United States, making the cause of action unavailable for marks known only within a smaller community. But that benefit is more than offset by a change permitting a plaintiff to only show a likelihood of dilution rather than having to show actual dilution.
Read our previous post for a discussion of the differences between dilution and infringement
T.R. Franklin
in Intellectual Property, Internet, Media, Tech
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