Free for a Fee

LexBlog/99 Park Row
James Aquilina
September 27, 2021

In a recent decision, the Review Board of the United States Copyright Office (“Board”) reversed an examiner’s prior refusal to register a copyright in the artistic elements present in the bed shown above, paving the way for the applicant to obtain a copyright registration in this work.

Copyright law does not protect useful articles per se (i.e., articles having a useful function that does not serve merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information), but does protect any artistic feature that is applied to or incorporated in a useful article, if the feature: “(1) can be perceived as a two- or three-dimensional work of art separate from the useful article and (2) would qualify as a protectable pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work—either on its own or fixed in some other tangible medium of expression—if it were imagined separately from the useful article into which it is incorporated.”  Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc., 137 S. Ct 1002, 1007 (2017).

more

The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2021/09/27/design-protection-dont-sleep-on-copyrights/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

On August 3, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Masterson v. Walt Disney Company, affirmed a district court’s dismissal of Carla Masterson’s copyright infringement claims against The Walt Disney Co. The infringement claim was based on Masterson’s allegation that Disney’s Inside Out (the Movie) violated her copyrights in her book of poetry, What’s On the Other Side of the Rainbow? (A Book of Feelings) (the Book) and her movie script, The Secret of the Golden Mirror (the Script). Masterson’s Book was a collection of poems featuring a cloud-like character, Mr. Positivity, and anthropomorphic doors representing different feelings. The Script is about Mr. Positivity and the anthropomorphic doors helping a child cope with a difficult situation. In contrast, Disney’s Inside Out is about an eleven-year-old girl and the anthropomorphized emotions that control her brain from her brain’s “Headquarters.” The district court held that the literary works were not substantially similar and granted Walt Disney’s motion to dismiss.

The content in this post was found at https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/08/15/ninth-circuit-affirms-dismissal-copyright-infringement-claim-disneys-inside-movie/id=124078/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

LexBlog/99 Park Row
Jason Mueller & Robert Hough
August 10, 2020
Starting this month [August 2020], social media influencers and other authors of online content can take advantage of a new group copyright registration option for short online works such as blog entries, social media posts and web articles. Authors could even register their own comments to a social post as separate copyrightable works in certain situations.

The U.S. Copyright Office announced that the new registration option allows applications covering groups of up to 50 literary works if those works meet the eligibility requirements. Most notably, each separate work must contain between 50 and 17,500 words, and all works in a single application must be created by the same individual, or jointly by the same group of individuals (although there is no limit on the number of applications that can be filed). In addition, all works must have been first published as part of a website or online platform, such as an online newspaper, social media website or social networking platform, and all works in a single application must have been first published within the same three calendar month period. Copyright claims in the selection, coordination or arrangement of the group as a whole will not be permitted. Resulting registrations will cover each work as a separate work of authorship.

more

The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2020/08/10/copyright-registration-blogs-social-media-posts/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Tech Dirt
Mike Masnick
Jul 31st 2020
Last month, we wrote about the big publishers suing the Internet Archive over its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program, as well as its National Emergency Library (NEL). As we’ve explained over and over again, the Internet Archive is doing exactly what libraries have always done: lending books. The CDL program was structured to mimic exactly how a traditional library works, with a 1-to-1 relationship between physical books owned by the library and digital copies that can be lent out.

While some struggled with the concept of the NEL since it was basically just the CDL, but without the 1-to-1 relationship (and thus, without wait lists), it seemed reasonably defensible: nearly all public libraries at the time had shut down entirely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the NEL was helping people who otherwise would never have had access to the books that were sitting inside libraries, collecting dust on the inaccessible shelves. Indeed, plenty of teachers and schools thanked the Internet Archive for making it possible for students to still read books that were stuck inside locked up classrooms. But, again, this lawsuit wasn’t just about the NEL at all, but about the whole CDL program. The publishers have been whining about the CDL for a while, but hadn’t sued until now.

Of course, the reality is that the big publishers see digital ebooks as an opportunity to craft a new business model. With traditional books, libraries buy the books, just like anyone else, and then lend them out. But thanks to a strained interpretation of copyright law, when it came to ebooks, the publishers jacked up the price for libraries to insane levels and kept putting more and more conditions on them. For example, Macmillan, for a while, was charging $60 per book — with a limit of 52 lends or two years of lending, whichever came first. And then you’d have to renew.

Basically, publishers were abusing copyright law to try to jam down an awful and awfully expensive model on libraries — exposing how much publishers really hate libraries, while pretending otherwise.

Anyway, the Internet Archive has filed its response to the lawsuit,

more

The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200730/23251945010/internet-archive-responds-to-publishers-lawsuit-libraries-lend-books-thats-what-we-do.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Technology & Marketing Law Blog
Eric Goldman
July 24, 2020

This case involves two copyright-protected photos that users submitted to the RageOn print-on-demand service. Among other defenses, RageOn invoked the DMCA safe harbor. The Greg Young v. Zazzle case held that Zazzle qualified for the 512(c) safe harbor for displaying user-supplied photo on its site, but not for manufacturing and shipping the physical items contain the photos. This court says that RageOn disqualified for several of the DMCA safe harbor’s elements.

more

The content in this post was found at https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/07/print-on-demand-vendor-doesnt-qualify-for-dmca-safe-harbor-feingold-v-rageon.htm Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

LexBlog/99 Park Row
J. Alexander Lawrence & Lily Smith
July 21, 2020
Foreign websites that use geotargeted advertising may be subject to personal jurisdiction in the United States, even if they have no physical presence in the United States and do not specifically target their services to the United States, according to a new ruling from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Kurbanov, twelve record companies sued Tofig Kurbanov, who owns and operates the websites: flvto.biz and 2conv.com. These websites enable visitors to rip audio tracks from videos on various platforms, like YouTube, and convert the audio tracks into downloadable files.

The record companies sued Kurbanov for copyright infringement and argued that a federal district court in Virginia had specific personal jurisdiction over Kurbanov because of his contacts with Virginia and with the United States more generally. Kurbanov moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, and the district court granted his motion.

The district court found that both flvto.biz and 2conv.com were semi-interactive, that the visitors’ interactions with them were non-commercial, and that Kurbanov did not purposefully target either Virginia or the United States. As a result, the court ruled that no federal court in the United States had personal jurisdiction over Kurbanov and to exert such jurisdiction would violate due process. On appeal, however, the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling and remanded the case.

more

The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2020/07/21/stretching-the-bounds-of-personal-jurisdiction-4th-circuit-finds-geotargeted-advertising-may-subject-foreign-website-owner-to-personal-jurisdiction-in-the-u-s Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Tech Dirt
Timothy Geigner
Jul 10th 2020

There is obviously a great deal of action going on currently in the streaming world, spurred on in part by the COVID-19 crises that has many people at home looking for fresh content. Between the attempts to respond to social movements and tamp down “hateful” content to changes to the competitive landscape, streaming services are having themselves a moment. But with the sudden uptick in popularity comes a new spotlight painting a target on streaming platforms for everyone from scammers to intellectual property maximilists.

Twitch has recently found itself a target for the latter, suddenly getting slammed with a wave of DMCA notices that appear to focus mostly on background music.

Copyright strikes are an occupational hazard for many Twitch streamers and content creators, but a recent surge of DMCA takedown requests has overwhelmed the community. Now, Twitch support staff has responded to complaints, stating that the claims are focused on clips with background music from 2017 to 2019, and recommending that streamers remove them. The tweets also state that this is the first time that Twitch has received mass DMCA claims against clips.

Given that Twitch is still most popular as a site for live-streams and let’s-plays of video games, the speculation is that a great deal of this is targeting clips that include video game music. And, as we’ve seen elsewhere, it’s also the case that scammers are currently using game music as a method to try to takedown or monetize the videos of others. Whether or not that’s what is going on here is anyone’s guess, as Twitch is making it fairly clear that the flood of notices is so large that it’s simply taking down content and advising its streamers to proactively take down anything that might include this sort of copyrighted content.

Except that leaves no room for a number of things, including arguments for Fair Use of certain music,

more

The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200709/10153644873/twitch-faces-sudden-stream-dmca-notices-over-background-music.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

An update from Kaitie Eke, one of the firm’s summer associates:

A copyright infringement lawsuit filed by four major publishing companies against the Internet Archive has prompted early termination of the site’s National Emergency Library, a project that made books available electronically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the project’s conclusion may render some of the publishers’ complaints moot, the suit also takes aim at the ongoing operation of the Open Library and larger Controlled Digital Lending (“CDL”) practices.

more

The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2020/06/30/suit-takes-aim-at-internet-archive-spurs-end-of-national-emergency-library/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com