When award-winning photographer Lynn Goldsmith snapped a portrait of the artist formerly known as Prince for Newsweek in 1981, she could not have predicted the cultural and legal impact the pop legend’s portrait would have. In 1984, Vanity Fair sought to license the photograph for an “artist reference” in a story about the musician. Goldsmith
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly growing field that has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives. One area where AI has already made significant inroads is in content creation. With the help of AI-powered writing assistants, businesses and individuals can generate high-quality content with minimal effort. However, there are legal concerns associated
Steven Thaler filed an application for copyright registration in a two-dimensional image entitled “Creativity Machine”. In his application, Thaler stated that the work “was autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine”. The Review Board of the United States Copyright Office (“Board”) denied the application stating it lacked human authorship necessary to support
Dr. Keith Bell published a book in 1982 entitled Winning Isn’t Normal which provides strategies for success in athletics. He markets the books through online retailers and his own website. One of the passages in the book that is well known is entitled the WIN Passage. He offers merchandise, including t-shirts and posters, that display
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal recently addressed a copyright infringement claim by local jazz musician Paul Batiste. Batiste alleged that a hip-hop duo infringed his musical work. However, the Court concluded that Batiste had failed to produce evidence for a reasonable jury to infer that the defendants had access to his music or to
The Case Act of 2020 provides cost-effective means to protect copyrights. With the passage of the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (the “CASE Act”), Congress has blessed the creation of an alternative forum for copyright infringement claims, the Copyright Claims Board (“CCB”) within the U.S. Copyright Office, in which claimants can seek
If you had ears in mid-2014, you’ve heard pop-star Taylor Swift’s Billboard Hot 100 song, “Shake it Off.” The lyrics feature a catchy phrase (apologies in advance for getting it stuck in your head):
‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just
On March 4, 2019 the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC clearing up that registration is a jurisdictional prerequisite to filing a copyright action. In the opinion authored by Justice Ginsburg, the Supreme Court concluded that a copyright claimant may commence an infringement suit
Copyright law protects original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium. Although the phrase may seem complicated, copyrights are perhaps the most basic and widespread of the intellectual property rights. Copyright law affects our daily lives. However, copyright’s effects are most apparent in the way they negatively impact everyday life – as in the