Copyright

Federal judge upholds right of Georgian State professors to post excerpts of published works online

A federal judge ruled substantially for Georgian State University in a copyright case. Georgia State professors were sued by publishing companies who objected to the professors posting online excerpts fr0m four books for the use of their students. The “fair use” doctrine allows the publishing of limited amounts of material without permission so long as the publication does not hurt the market for the material. -db From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 14, 2012, by Bill

Read More »

Righthaven meets a sorry end

When a Nevada federal district court transferred Righthaven’s intellectual property to a court-appointed receiver for auction, it appeared that the copyright enforcer is finally done for. Righthaven had attempted to conduct business by suing small time bloggers and others for posting content from newspapers that Righthaven claimed had sold them the copyrights. -db From a commentary for the Citizens Media Law Project, March 15, 2012, by Arthur Bright. Full story    

Read More »

Germany favors charging news aggregators

A committee for the German government is proposing a collecting society that would charge royalties to those re-publishing news excerpts. That arrangement already exists in the United Kingdom where the Newspaper Licensing Agency asks news aggregators to pay a fee to process and receive summaries of online newspaper articles. -db From paidContent, March 9, 2012, by Robert Andrews. Full story      

Read More »

Copyright: Hotfile challenges Warner Bros. take down procedures

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to hold Warner Bros. accountable for making false copyright claims using a “automated dragnet technique” to send out take down notices to those it suspects of violating copyright. EFF has filed an amicus brief in a case pitting the file-sharing website Hotfile against Warner Bros. and a collection of prominent entertainment companies. -db From the Courthouse News Service, March 8, 2012, by Marimer Matos. Full story 

Read More »

Louis Vuitton files cease-and-desist order over trademark parody by Penn students

Louis Vuitton should lighten up after filing a cease-and-desist letter accusing a student group at University of Pennsylvania of violating copyright with a parody of the LV signature pattern in advertising a symposium on fashion and intellectual property law, argues Arthur Bright for the Citizen Media Law Project. Bright says LV has a lot more to lose in public relations capital than it could possibly gain by such a suit against student. -db From a

Read More »