Many of you may be familiar with the pop hit “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, Clifford Harris, more popularly known as T.I., and Pharrell Williams (the “Composers”). If it does not sound familiar by title, perhaps you may recall it for its controversial nudity laden music video, or the fact that it was the song performed by Thicke and Miley Cyrus at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2013 when Miley’s scandalous conduct went viral and shocked the world—including Thicke’s spouse. However, what you may be less familiar with is the fact that the heirs of Motown great Marvin Gaye (the “Heirs”) have been threatening to sue the Composers since at least early 2013. The Heirs claim that “Blurred Lines” infringes their copyright in the Marvin Gaye song “Got to Give it Up.” However, in August 2013, after months of discussion on the issue, the Composers opted to file an action for declaratory relief in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, seeking a judgment that “Blurred Lines” does not infringe “Got to Give it Up.” The justification there was likely that sometimes the best defense is a strong offense. The Heirs then filed a counterclaim for copyright infringement alleging that “Blurred” Lines” does in fact infringe “Got to Give it Up” and also that another song by Robin Thicke and Paula Patton—“Love After War”—infringes Marvin Gaye’s song “After the Dance.” The trial on this matter began on February 24, 2015 and is currently ongoing.
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The Left Shark, Katy Perry and Copyright Chum
What do you get when you take one shark costume, add a confused backup dancer, throw in Katy Perry and the Super Bowl halftime show and top it off with a satirical artist with a 3D printer? First the backstory.
The “Left Shark” in question is a Katy Perry backup dancer who was dressed in a shark costume for Perry’s beach-themed number “Teenage Dream” during the Super Bowl halftime show. The Left Shark (the dancer to Perry’s right) seemed to have forgotten his dance moves — how else could you explain the flailing of fins. The Internet took notice; so did 3D sculptor Fernando Soza.
Soza’s satirical barbs are usually reserved for the politico set, such as Governor Chris Christie wearing a traffic cone and carrying a sign that reads “traffic study”. However, this time he took aim at the Left Shark and created a 3D printed sculpture of one regular shark, one pink shark and one holding a beer bottle.
So what do you get when you take one shark costume, add a confused backup dancer, throw in Katy Perry and the Super Bowl halftime show and top it off with a satirical artist with a 3D printer? You have the makings for a copyright dispute, of course. What else could there be?
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Cambridge v. Becker – A Copyright Win For Publishers or an Enlargement of Fair Use?
Recently the 11th Circuit addressed on appeal the question of whether fair use insulates from copyright liability a University which offers to its students a digital repository of reading material culled from third party publications without the benefit of a license. Three academic publishers filed suit against Georgia State University claiming that the University infringed their copyrights by maintaining a policy which allows GSU professors to make digital copies of excerpts of their books available to students without paying them a royalty. Prior copyright cases known as the “course pack cases” – cases in which commercial copy shops were found to have infringed copyrights by printing course packs containing excerpts from third party publications without permission from the publishers – seemed to dictate a finding of infringement. However, of the 74 instances of infringement alleged, the lower court found that the Plaintiffs failed to establish a prima facie case of infringement for 26 works and that fair use applied to all but 5 instances.
The fair use of a copyrighted work is not an infringement of copyright. The four factors a court must consider in determining whether fair use applies are: (1) the purpose of the allegedly infringing use, (2) the nature of the original work, (3) the size and significance of the portion of the original work that was copied, and (4) the effect of the allegedly infringing use on the potential market for or value of the original.
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What is and What Should Never Be: Led Zeppelin Not Feeling a Whole Lotta Love in Pennsylvania
On May 31, 2014, members of the band Led Zeppelin and its publishers were sued for copyright infringement by Randy California, the former guitarist and front man of the band Spirit. The lawsuit, filed in the state of Pennsylvania, alleges that a significant portion of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” was stolen from “Taurus,” a
Copyright Ownership Claim Of Pictures Taken By Wild Ape is Monkey Business
Recently, Wikimedia (the entity behind Wikipedia) has refused repeated requests from professional photographer David Slater to remove from one of his most famous photos from its royalty free photo collection website. The photo at issue is a “monkey selfie.” Slater claims he owns the copyright to the photo and Wikimedia is using it without his permission. Bananas! claimed Wikimedia; a recent report reveals that Wikimedia editors decided that Mr Slater has no claim on the image as the monkey itself took the picture.
In what must be the wildest of luck, Slater was visiting a North Sulawesi national park in Indonesia when a black macaque grabbed an errant camera and took an amazing array of self-portraits. These amazing pictures ran in an July 5 article about the incident in the UK’s Daily Mail. Two of the four pictures featured in the article included a copyright notice indicating Caters News Agency (Slater’s photo agency) as the owner.
Can Canters News Agency or Mr. Slater own the copyright in the photos taken by this highly intelligent and obviously photogenic? In order for this to be the case, the monkey would have to be an author under the Copyright Act. And if a monkey can be considered an author, he or she would have to assign or transfer the copyright in the photos to Caters News Agency.
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