Copyright Law

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By: April Hiroshima Gatling

Last Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion addressing the interplay between the state statutory right of publicity and the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. �� 101-1332. In Laws v. Sony Music Entertainment, Inc., the Ninth Circuit ruled that the state law “right of publicity” claim of a recording artist who gave her record company the sole and exclusive copyright to a song recording, was preempted by the Copyright Act.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit-State Law “Right of Publicity” Claim Preempted by Copyright Act

By Scott Hervey

XM’s introduction of a new service called XM + MP3 that allows its subscribers to listen to XM’s service on a portable player and record up to fifty hours of programming. In addition, the new service and player (called Inno) allows users to isolate and save perfect digital copies of songs for unlimited replay as long as they maintain their XM subscription. The service also allows XM users to create custom playlists which trigger automatic recording and storage of songs on the playlist when broadcast over one of the many XM stations
Continue Reading The RIAA Goes After XM Satellite Radio for Copyright Infringement

By Scott Hervey

A Federal district court jury in Nashville levied a $4.3 million dollar verdict against Sean Combs’ (Puffy) Bad Boy Entertainment, Bad Boy, LLC and Universal Records/UMG Recordings for infringing copyright owned by Bridgeport Music and Westbound records. The suit resulted from the use of a six second sample from the Ohio Player’s Singing in the Morning used by producer Easy Money in the title track to the Universal released Notorious B.IG.’s 1994 album “Ready to Die.”
Continue Reading Learn a Lesson from Puffy -Don’t Ignore a Cease and Desist Letter

By Scott Hervey

Picking an Errors and Omission policy can be an extremely important undertaking, especially for a technology focused company. When legal costs for defending a complex intellectual property infringement claim can exceed half a million dollars, the right E&O policy can mean the difference between the life and death of a company just starting to find traction in the market place. But more often than not, the decision on what policy to buy is left to an inexperienced company employee who only has a broker’s advice to rely on. This arrangement is probably fine for workers compensation and general commercial liability policies, but non-lawyers and lawyers are not familiar with technology companies and all the issues they encounter are out of their league when it comes to determining which E&O policy shifts the most risk.
Continue Reading Tech Companies, Insure You Choose the Correct E&O Policy!

By Scott Hervey

Just how valuable are baseball statistics? Apparently very valuable. In fact, baseball statistics are so valuable that CBC Distribution and Marketing, which has run the CDM Fantasy Sports leagues since 1992, has decided to sue Major League Baseball and challenge its copyright claim over player statistics. CBC agues that baseball statistics become historical facts as soon as a game is over, and that it shouldn’t have to pay for the right to use them. Major League Baseball claims that intellectual property law makes it illegal for fantasy leagues to commercially exploit the statistical profiles of its players.
Continue Reading Fantasy Sports League Brings On the Heat In Challenging MLB’s Ownership Of Player Statistics