Global fashion brand Nine West recently filed a Notice of Opposition with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board contesting the registration of the mark “Nina West” by a company owned by Andrew Levitt, drag name Nina West.
Continue Reading Nine West Asks Drag Queen Nina West to Sashay Away… From Her Trademark Application
In December 2019, Scott Hervey wrote about the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Taylor Swift by the writers of the song “Playas Gon’ Play.” The song was released by the girl group 3LW in 2001 and included the lyrics “Playa, they gonna play / And haters, they gonna hate.” In 2014, Taylor Swift released “Shake It Off,” which included the lyrics “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”
Continue Reading Taylor Swift Keeps Fighting the ‘Players’ and the ‘Haters’
We recently wrote about a case in the Southern District of New York against Mashable relating to the embedding of content from social media platforms like Instagram. In that case, the court held that Instagram’s terms of use (which were accepted by the plaintiff, a photographer, when he created an Instagram account) were insufficiently clear to allow Mashable to escape liability for publishing Instagram content through the process of embedding. Thereafter, the parties settled out of court. Legal watchers speculated that the ruling would encourage copyright infringement claims based on the embedding of content.
Continue Reading Instagram Faces Claims That It Encouraged Media Companies to Illegally Embed Images Posted to Instagram by Users
Pfizer and BioNTech recently asked the Southern District of California to dismiss a patent infringement claim from Allele Biotechnology related to Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine.
Allele holds a patent for a fluorescent protein called mNeonGreen, which causes some cells to glow when exposed to certain kinds of light. Allele does not claim that mNeonGreen
A recent case in the Southern District of New York calls into serious question the ubiquitous practice of embedding photographs on a content creator’s website.
An embedded photo is one that is not hosted on the website’s own server, but instead is linked to a third-party server like a social media site. Instead of the photo being permanently available on the website, the website pulls the photo from the third-party site live when the website is accessed by a user. Platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok make it extremely easy for websites to embed user posts, and provide website designers with tools specifically meant to make embedding seamless for the user.
In a recent case (Sinclair v. Ziff Davis, LLC, 1:18-cv-00790, S.D.N.Y.), a professional photographer posted a photo to Instagram that was later embedded by Mashable in an article on its website. In its original ruling, the court held that Instagram’s terms of service (which every user, including Sinclair, accepts when signing up) permitted the embedding on links on third party websites. The court ruled that Instagram had the right to relicense Sinclair’s image to Mashable, and granted Mashable a dismissal of Sinclair’s claims.
Continue Reading Recent Case Demonstrates the Need for Caution When Embedding Links to Social Media Posts
