Managing Intellectual Property in a Crisis (Part 1); JDSupra, March 31, 2020

Joseph Falcon, III, JDSupra; Managing Intellectual Property in a Crisis (Part 1)

"Businesses are often not aware that they own intellectual property that generally provides the owner exclusionary rights, which are critical to any business that wants to commercialize their product or services in view of competition. Therefore, those companies that appropriately manage intellectual property rights create improved opportunities to protect and exploit these rights as assets, especially in an economic crisis or downturn. Developing and maintaining intellectual property, as a management strategy, has proven to be an effective tool for any company and having such a strategy may be essential for a business to gain and maintain a competitive advantage, especially in today’s economy."

Music Copyright Infringement Is Beginning To Make Sense Again; Forbes, April 1, 2020

Bobby Owsinski, Forbes; Music Copyright Infringement Is Beginning To Make Sense Again

"But finally there is some indication that sanity may be returning to the courtroom when it comes to music copyright infringement...

This is a feel-good story if I ever heard one, except for the mental anguish and time that the people of Burbank High School had to endure. I get it that a copyright holder is trying to protect its rights. Publishers and songwriters deserve to get paid, and I don't think anyone questions that. Suing a school over a fundraiser is not going to make you many friends, however.

The bottom line is that common sense now seems to prevail when it comes to music copyright infringement cases, and it’s about time. May it continue this way for a long time."

Copyright Alliance blasts Internet Archive’s Emergency Library launch as “vile”; ZDNet, March 31, 2020

Charlie Osborne, ZDNet; Copyright Alliance blasts Internet Archive’s Emergency Library launch as “vile”

The National Emergency Library opened to help learners “displaced” by COVID-19.

"The Authors Guild said that COVID-19 has been used "as an excuse to push copyright law further out to the edges" which, in turn, is causing authors that are already struggling to pay the bills additional harm...

"Acting as a piracy site -- of which there already are too many -- the Internet Archive tramples on authors' rights by giving away their books to the world," the group says.  

More criticism has come in the form of comments made by the Copyright Alliance, an organization that represents the rights of those in creative industries including authors and artists. CEO Keith Kupferschmid noted that creators are among the hardest hit at present, and while projects have been set up to help those in these industries, the executive said IA's project is making "things much worse for those that need our help.""

Who Owns the Copyright to Tattoos? A Court Issues a Landmark Ruling Over LeBron James and Other NBA Stars’ Right to License Their Body Art; artnet news, March 30, 2020

Taylor Dafoe, artnet news; Who Owns the Copyright to Tattoos? A Court Issues a Landmark Ruling Over LeBron James and Other NBA Stars’ Right to License Their Body Art

LeBron James says he has the right to license his own likeness, and that includes his tattoos.

"The US district court judge came down on the side of the video game company, writing that the “tattooists necessarily granted the Players nonexclusive licenses to use the Tattoos as part of their likenesses.”...

The judge ultimately agreed with James when she “effectively decided that the right of the athletes to license their likeness was not enslaved by the copyright interests of those artists that had inked the athletes,” Amelia Brankov, a copyright lawyer not involved in the case, told Artnet News...

Whether or not the decision will impact future cases on body art is still to be seen, but Brankov notes that there are several other pending cases against video game publishers that pertain to tattoos.

“While other courts are not obligated to follow her reasoning, [this judge’s] decision could be a harbinger of dismissals in other cases,” Brankov says."

A Revolution in Science Publishing, or Business as Usual?; UNDARK, March 30, 2020

Michael Schulson, UNDARK; A Revolution in Science Publishing, or Business as Usual?

"Some advocates see corporate open-access as a pragmatic way of opening up research to the masses. But others see the new model as a corruption of the original vision — one that will continue to funnel billions of dollars into big publishing companies, marginalize scientists in lower income countries, and fail to fix deeper, systemic problems in scientific publishing.

As it stands, all trends point to an open-access future. The question now is what kind of open-access model it will be — and what that future may mean for the way new science gets evaluated, published, and shared. “We don’t know why we should accept that open access is a market,” said Dominique Babini, the open-access adviser to the Latin American Council of Social Sciences and a prominent critic of commercial open-access models. “If knowledge is a human right, why can’t we manage it as a commons, in collaborative ways managed by the academic community, not by for-profit initiatives?”"

Stay Away; No Trademark For Social Distancing And Other Informational Terms; JDSupra, March 23, 2020

Weintraub Tobin and Scott Hervey, JD Supra; Stay Away; No Trademark For Social Distancing And Other Informational Terms

"The trademark examiner assigned to an application to register SOCIAL DISTANCING will likely refuse registration because it fails to function as a trademark because it merely conveys an informational message. Where a term is merely informational, the context of its use in the marketplace would cause consumers to perceive the term as merely conveying an informational message, and not a means to identify and distinguish goods/services from those of others...

Some examples of proposed marks that have been denied registration on the grounds of being merely information or a widely used message are: ITS TACO TUESDAY for clothing, I LOVE YOU for jewelry, BLACK LIVES MATTER for a wide variety of goods and services, THINK GREEN for products advertised to be recyclable and to promote energy conservation, and DRIVE SAFELY for automobiles.

The trademark examiner would contend that the proposed mark, SOCIAL DISTANCING, merely conveys an expression of support for the ideas embodied in the message, that maintaining a certain distance between individuals is a measure people can take to slow the rapid spread of the coronavirus, as opposed to rather than an indicator of a single source of goods or services. In support of the refusal to register, the trademark examiner would introduce evidence from the CDC and other sources discussing the benefits of social distancing in slowing down the spread of coronavirus."

A Cosmic Copyright Conundrum: ‘Star Trek,’ Space Force, SCOTUS and Blackbeard’s Shipwreck: IPWatchdog, March 28, 2020

 Yitzchak Besser, IPWatchdog; A Cosmic Copyright Conundrum: ‘Star Trek,’ Space Force, SCOTUS and Blackbeard’s Shipwreck

"A Cosmic Conundrum

To unpack the result of this decision, let’s return to space. In a hypothetical scenario in which a private citizen infringed on the Star Trek copyrights, ViacomCBS could easily bring a lawsuit against them. If ViacomCBS believes that the Space Force seal infringes on its copyrights, then it can sue the U.S. government. But if a hypothetical North Carolina Space Force decided to use the Starfleet seal without permission, then ViacomCBS would be left without recourse against the state government.

To paraphrase Justice Breyer, something certainly seems “amiss” about this disparity. As he suggested in his concurrence, this case creates the potential for quite the cosmic copyright conundrum."