Group items tagged

This report from Business Week highlights some recent developments in intellectual property news. Chrysler is actually suing a Detroit clothing company for trademark infringement on the slogan "Imported from Detroit." The saying was introduced in a Chrysler commercial that aired during the Super Bowl this year, featuring Eminem. Chrysler brings the case to court with the justification that the phrase is intended to indicate "luxury" to customers, in addition to the fact that millions were invested to produce the commercial. As a result, t-shirts with the slogan are misleading to the public, the automaker claims. Do you think Chrysler has a strong case? Here's the original commercial, if you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI6puP3cClM

Great response on the presentation we heard today about fashion and intellectual property!

Personality rights, a subset of intellectual property/copyright, is a major issue among players in the NCAA.  

not actually news, but an interesting article on plagiarism from 2007. "The idea that culture can be property-intellectual property-is used to justify everything from attempts to force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone." What do you all think of Lethem's article?

The Country music duo the "Bellamy Brothers" are upset over Britney song title's resemblance to their 1979 hit but it seem they will not be suing the popstar.

I know that the Bellamy Brothers specifically mention the title, but I think they would have a much stronger case on the basis of "fixing" the double entendre within the song: the BB's lyrics are "If I said you had a beautiful body / would you hold it against me" vs. Britney's "If I said I want your body now / would you hold it against me." That's pretty startlingly similar, and even if you can't copyright ideas, you can copyright the expression of those ideas... and there's enough overlap between the two to be persuasive.

Now that I know copying a song title doesn't count as copyright infringement, I wonder what percentage of a songs lyrics must be exactly the same as another song in order for that to count as copyright infringement. And even if the lyrics happen to be the same, can an artist still avoid a lawsuit if his or her melodic line/ chordal progression/ instrumentation is different enough to make the song "original"? I'm guessing that its a case-by-case thing...

Should Google have to pay for its content on Google News?

This is an insightful video, a decent watch.

The Twilight poster and album cover have an undeniable resemblance to each other, however, I think Summit's interference and influence on pulling his music from YouTube and iTunes was unnecessary. If Summit believed that the artist had stolen material for his album cover, then the company should have sued him instead. Also, if Twilight had inspired his music, then technically, this is not copyright infringement. I do not think that the music itself was a violation of intellectual property.

Harvard students rally alongside the MPAA.

This is the wikipedia article I would like to work on

Google worries that the 2009 ruling against isoHunt will affect its own services and services of its website, YouTube. While Google believes isoHunt is liable, they would like the court to be more precise. They would like to see isoHunt charged with only specific instances of inducing. Google is also pushing to see isoHunt protected by safe harbor under DMCA. "It's clear this court thinks the DMCA online safe harbors only insulate against direct infringement, not secondary infringement," writes intellectual property attorney Eric Goldman on his Technology & Marketing Law Blog. "The interplay between the safe harbors and secondary infringement remains a multi-billion statutory ambiguity."

In the bottom corner of the page, there is an ad that keeps running to the tune of "Spoonful of Sugar" from Mary Poppins.  The chances that it's legally licensed?  Super sweet-n-low.

Saw this! Was REALLY interesting!