By Scott Hervey

A class action lawsuit filed this past May by a small group of independent music publishers against major online music services for failing to secure licenses to sell downloadable versions of certain songs brought to light what could be a crack in the way labels, digital content distributors and online music services clear music for digital distribution. The publisher’s copyright infringement lawsuit names as defendants Apple, AOL Music Now. Buy.com, Microsoft, Napster, Real Networks, Yahoo and others. Continue Reading Digital Applications of the Compulsory License

Scott Hervey was quoted in a June 20, 2006 edition of Lawyers USA in an article about the MLB filing a federal lawsuit against a fantasy baseball league operator to determine who has the right to use the baseball statistics for commercial purposes.   Scott was quoted as saying "the statutory right of publicity is the hook on which Major League Baseball can hang this case."

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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