If you search on Google® for “demand letter +copyright”, most of your first pages of hits will be articles written by individuals who received cease and desist letters, or attorneys who want to represent them. These writers focus on how outrageous and upsetting it is to receive a demand letter, how the recipient does not…
If your product (jewelry, toys, books, etc.) is tangible and sold at retail, the good news is that enforcing your copyright and trademark rights is more straightforward than with downloadable products. With downloadable goods – like music, movies, and photographs – it’s often difficult to determine even the continent on which the infringer is located. …
Both attorneys and clients often feel frustrated at the end of a lawsuit with an apparently Pyrrhic victory: a favorable judgment, but then facing the task of actually collecting from the defendant. Whether the defendant (now having earned the title of “judgment debtor”) has any money, property or potential to pay the judgment seems like…
Judge Chin of the Southern District of New York issued a long-awaited (and, doubtless, soon-to-be-appealed) decision: dismissing, as a matter of summary judgment, the lawsuit that The Author’s Guild brought against Google. I leave it to each reader (and to each author) to determine whether the result is good or bad, but I must disagree…
With apps that invite photographs, videos or more, the app developer often wants to use those images for promotional purposes. The question is whether you can enforce an individual’s release of rights in their name and likeness (an “image release”) for promotional purposes if the release was only “signed” by an individual who enters into…
Defendants served with a summons and complaint need to choose the right strategy at the beginning of the lawsuit so that they might end the litigation sooner. In two recent cases, plaintiffs’ failures to bring their case in the proper court led to dismissal of cases against defendants. In a federal case, brought in the…
Albert Prince has once again proven that – for better or worse – he is the epitome of an “appropriation artist.” You may recall that I had some misgivings about the 2nd Circuit’s determination in Cariou v. Prince that Prince did not infringe upon plaintiff’s copyrights by making so-called“transformative use” of entire photographs that he incorporated on canvasses and…
In my humble opinion, the decision in Cariou v. Prince, Case No. 11 CV 1197 (2nd Circuit, 4/25/13)is wrongly decided. Self-proclaimed “appropriation artist” Richard Prince took a book of photographs by Patrick Cariou, blew them up to canvas size, and in most works, slightly altered the Rastafarian subject, painting blue lozenges over the subject’s eyes or pasting…
In my humble opinion, the decision in Cariou v. Prince, Case No. 11 CV 1197 (2nd Circuit, 4/25/13)is wrongly decided. Self-proclaimed “appropriation artist” Richard Prince took a book of photographs by Patrick Cariou, blew them up to canvas size, and in most works, slightly altered the Rastafarian subject, painting blue lozenges over the subject’s eyes or pasting…
A friend wanted to file a U.S. trademark application, but knew about a similar trademark that is used exclusively outside the U.S. Should she rush to file an application here, or would she be preempted by a foreign trademark registration? The answer, of course, is maybe. Section 44(d) of the Lanham Act, also known as…