Copyright Law

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By Dale Campbell

Companies that remove “objectionable” content from mainstream movies failed in their attempt to add a new public policy test to the fair use defense to copyright infringement. The United States District Court of Colorado issued summary judgment in favor of several big-name producers and movie studios and against several “clean movie” companies in the business of creating sanitized versions of movies. (Clean Flicks of Colorado LLC, et al. v. Stephen Soderbergh, et al., Case No. 1:02-CV-01662, in the United States District Court of the District of Colorado.)
Continue Reading Court Rejects Adoption of a Public Policy Test Component to Fair Use Doctrine

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

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