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LexBlog
Peggy Keene
February 4, 2020

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an incredibly important case between Oracle and Google regarding whether or not APIs can be protected under copyright law.

Oracle Accuses Google of Copying Java API, Claiming Copyright Infringement

In the case at hand, Oracle has accused Google of copying the API of Oracle’s Java programming language.  For those unfamiliar with the terminology, an API or “application programming interface” is basically the coding language that a computer relies on to execute tasks.  In other words, an API is the language that a computer relies on to know what to do.  Each API houses its own defined terms and vocabulary that includes named commands organized by grammatical structures that designate how the commands will be executed.

In this case, to execute or perform specific tasks using Java, a programmer must know “how to code in Java.” In other words, the programmer must know the predefined terms, commands, and specific grammatical structures unique to Java.

Oracle claims that the alleged copyright infringement occurred when Google copied the Java API commands wholesale in order to encourage programmers fluent in Java to program on Google’s Android operating system.  Oracle claims that Google knowingly reimplemented Java in order to entice programmers that were well-versed in Java into bringing their software and expertise to Google.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2020/02/04/can-application-programming-interfaces-apis-be-protected-under-copyright-law/ 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
February 5, 2020

Hughes is a YouTuber. She made a 10 minute video of Hillary Clinton’s election night party called “We Thought She Would Win” and posted it to her channel. Benjamin also is a YouTuber, but on the opposite end of the political spectrum. He created a 2 minute video called “SJW Levels of Awareness,” which consisted solely of 6 excerpts from Hughes’ video without any additional commentary. He posted this video to his channel, which contained other videos criticizing the Left, feminists, and Black Lives Matter. Hughes sent a takedown notice to YouTube, which YouTube honored. Benjamin counternoticed, which YouTube apparently honored as well. Hughes sued Benjamin for copyright infringement and a 512(f) violation due to his counternotice. The court dismisses both claims.

IP Watchdog
Nancy Braman
February 14, 2020

In the latest stage of the Supreme Court battle between Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle) and Google, Oracle filed its opening brief with the Court on February 12. Google’s petition for a writ of certiorari was granted in November 2019 and asks the Court to consider: “1. Whether copyright protection extends to a software interface” and “2. Whether, as the jury found, petitioner’s use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use.” The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) previously unanimously reversed a district court decision that held Oracle’s code as uncopyrightable, finding it well established that copyright protection for software programs can extend to both code and their structure or organization. Oracle is suing Google for $8.8 billion in lost revenue.

The content in this post was found at https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/02/14/oracle-files-opening-brief-u-s-supreme-court-copyright-fight-google/id=118895/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

IP Watchdog
Michael Shore
February 18, 2020

On January 6, 2020, Google submitted its brief in Google v. Oracle, kicking off the Supreme Court case that many are calling the “copyright case of the decade.” The suit pits the search engine platform controlling 93% of the worldwide search market against Oracle, the owner of the ubiquitous Java program, which submitted its response brief last week. After attempting and failing to secure the rights to Java, Google decided to cease negotiating and instead replicated 37 API packages from the copyrighted program, a decision that precipitated the years-long lawsuit.

The content in this post was found at https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/02/18/earth-google-heres-apis-need-copyrightable/id=118999/ 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
March 6, 2020

All regular readers here will need is to see a headline that includes both the word “trademark” and the NFL to get their eyes rolling. The NFL is notorious in its jealous protection of its intellectual property. In fact, the league goes much further than your everyday trademark bully, chiefly by pretending it has trademark rights that it absolutely does not have. This usually rears its head in the run up to the Super Bowl.

But the other game of pretend the NFL likes to play is one in which it pretends to not know that Fair Use exists. That can be seen most recently in the league going after a seller or parody NY Jets gear on his Shopify site, getting the whole store taken down by asserting trademark infringement.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200306/12173244051/nfl-gets-shopify-to-take-down-clear-ny-jets-parody-merch-site-with-trademark-complaint.shtml 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
July 25, 2019

It sometimes is difficult to get people to understand just how >utterly insane the college textbook market is. You have a captive audience who has no choice but to purchase what the professor requires (which is why it’s doubly lame when professors require their own books). But even people who went to college a few decades ago may not be aware of just how much textbook prices have kept rising. A study from 2015 showed that college textbook prices had risen over 1000% since 1977. 1,000%.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190716/17335842600/death-ownership-educational-publishing-giant-pearson-to-do-away-with-print-textbooks-that-can-be-resold.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Mike Masnick
Tech Dirt
August 22, 2019

Nearly a decade ago, we wrote a bunch about an excellent book called Copyfraud, by law professor Jason Mazzone, which went into great detail about how the legacy entertainment industry companies have used copyright in ways that are clearly against copyright’s intent — to the point that they border on fraud. The concept of copyfraud should be referred to more frequently, and here’s a perfect example. Just a couple months ago, we wrote about the amazing social media account of Jimmy O’Brien, who goes by @Jomboy_ on Twitter. He’s combined his love of baseball, his video editing skills, his ability to read lips incredibly well, and with a sarcastic, dry sense of humor to make a ton of amazing videos about various things happening in baseball. We highlighted a bunch last time around and his profile has only grown a lot since then, including among Major League Baseball players.

About a month after that post, Jomboy may have had his biggest moment so far, in putting together a truly amazing video of NY Yankees manager Aaron Boone getting ejected — following a bunch of players and Boone arguing with a young umpire over some bad calls. What took the video from normal great to amazing was that it revealed exactly what Boone was saying to the ump during their argument thanks to a bunch of “hot mics” from the broadcast. That allowed us to learn a lot more about this argument than anyone normally does in watching a manager scream at an ump:

That video alone went crazy viral and launched an even more viral meme in the phrase “fucking savages,” that is now on tons of t-shirts. Yankee fans have embraced it. The players have embraced it. By any stretch of the imagination, this was actually great for the game of baseball.

So, of course, Major League Baseball wants to kill it. Because that’s what MLB does. MLB’s head of discipline (and a former Yankee manager himself), Joe Torre is apparently really really upset about these hot mic videos that have gotten fans so excited about the game. Because how dare fans learn about the personalities of the people in the game.=

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190815/22332942792/why-is-mlb-claiming-revenue-obviously-fair-use-videos-youtube.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

John Cannan
IP Watchdog
June 8, 2019

The Eighties are in! A contagious wave of nostalgia has infected popular culture with period TV series, from shows like Stranger Things to rebirths and reboots of the era’s shows and movies. This retro cultural appropriation was bound to involve a copyright issue. Indeed, a dispute arose over a documentary on the 1985 Chicago Bears, which made an unauthorized use of the team’s landmark music video, The Superbowl Shuffle. The Shuffle’s owners claimed an infringement on the licensing market for the work. The documentarians claimed fair use. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, ruled for the documentarians, granting them summary judgment, in Red Label Music Publishing v. Chila Productions.

The content in this post was found at https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/06/08/not-start-trouble-court-rules-documentarys-use-super-bowl-shuffle-fair-use/id=110213/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Valerie Brennan & Gabriel Guerra Medellin
LexBlog
June 10, 2019
The many historic landmarks and neighborhoods in Washington DC are one of the draws for locating events there. In a cautionary tale for event organizers, however, the Court of Appeals of the Fourth District recently ruled that unauthorized use of a third party photograph of the Adams Morgan neighborhood did not qualify as fair use, reversing and remanding the District Court’s summary judgment order.