We previously wrote about a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California against Instagram regarding the use of Instagram’s embedding tools. The plaintiffs, in that case, are two photojournalists who captured images of the George Floyd protests and the 2016 election and posted them to Instagram. Various media companies embedded the photos using Instagram’s proprietary embedding tools. The photos, therefore, appeared on websites without any license from the original photographers. Continue Reading Instagram Defeats Embedding Lawsuit

In this episode of The Briefing by the IP Law Blog, Scott Hervey and Josh Escovedo discuss a Trademark dispute between luxury retailer Hermès and a digital artist over his creation of Birkin Bag NFTs. Continue Reading The Briefing by the IP Law Blog: Hermès Attempts to Bag Digital Creator Selling MetaBirkin NFTs

When entering into contracts, parties commonly include forum selection clauses to govern future litigation between the parties. When doing so, parties need to actively consider whether they intend that forum selection clause to prohibit filing petitions, such as petitions for inter partes review of patents, with the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”). The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has generally recognized that parties can bargain away these rights, including through forum selection clauses in contracts. This issue recently arose in Nippon Shinyaku v. Sarepta. Continue Reading Be Careful Not to Unintentionally Bargain Away the Right to File IPRs

In this episode of The Briefing by the IP Law Blog, Scott Hervey and Josh Escovedo discuss the U.S. Copyright Office’s refusal to register a copyright for a piece of artwork created by Artificial Intelligence. Continue Reading The Briefing by the IP Law Blog: Copyright Office Rejects Application for A.I. Created Art Work

The United States Copyright Office has refused to register a copyright for a work of art created by a machine.

The work of art is a two-dimensional picture that is mostly dark and sort of looks like a painting. It is a view looking towards a series of two archways over railroad tracks, with walls along the sides covered in very dark green, purple, blue, and pink foliage, with a tiny bit of blue and cloudy sky above. The title is “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” The work was created by a machine called “Creativity Machine” and was submitted for copyright registration in 2018 by Steven Thaler. Continue Reading Is Machine-Made Art Copyrightable?