Recent Articles

Encyclopedias of Facts About Fiction: J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter

September 28, 2008 21:01

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. v. RDR Books, --- F. Supp.2d ---, 2008 WL 4126736 (9/8/2008) S.D.N.Y., Patterson, J. A Harry Potter fan created a lexicon, available on the internet. The lexicon was popular with everyone, including J.K. Rowling and the people who made films about her books. Rowling...

Film Production, Rights of Publicity and Borat

September 13, 2008 22:23

Lemerond v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 2008 WL 918579, 87 U.S.P.Q.2d 1219 (S.D.N.Y.)(LAP). Psenicska v. Twentieth Century Fox, 07 Civ. 10972 S.D.N.Y, September 3, 2007 (Preska, J.) found here courtesy of How Appealing.When you make a film, do you need a person's permission before you put...

Direct Infringement and Digital Video Recorders: Catch as Cache Can

September 09, 2008 14:47

Cartoon Network LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., --- F.3d ---, 2008 WL 252614 (August 4, 2008). Instead of taking a satellite signal and broadcasting it straight into your home at the time dictated by the broadcaster, your local cable company sets up a very fancy digital box (Digital Video Recorder or...

Creative Commons, Open Source, Copyright and Contract Law

September 06, 2008 17:38

For a number of years, activists dismayed at how commercial enterprises exploited copyright agitated to change the nature of how copyrighted works affected creative collaboration. They imagined a world of greater creative collaboration where everyone would still be able to make a living.Authors,...

Associated Press v. Moreover: Hot News, Linking and Getting Legal Documents From Pacer

September 01, 2008 21:04

Associated Press v. Moreover, a recently-settled copyright infringement and "hot news" misappropriation case in the Southern District of New York, brought up the issue of what search engines can take when displaying the content of others. Moreover is a news aggregator that searches 3.5 million...

User-Generated Video Uploads Veoh, Napster, Google and Safe Harbors

August 29, 2008 19:15

In Io Group, Inc. v. Veoh Networks, Inc., No. C06-03926 (HRL), a decision dated August 27, 2008 by Northern District of California Judge Harold Lloyd, discussed by PC Magazine here, the court found that the video uploading service found at http://www.veoh.com/ is not liable for copyright...

Document Production During Discovery: Search and Redact with Acrobat 8 Pro

August 21, 2008 16:16

Redaction is the process of removing information from documents. You can see from the attached image, which is a slide that I recently used in a litigation, I have redacted the title of the slide using Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro.One of the most tedious and time-consuming jobs in litigation is producing...

Of Mice and Men - Termination Rights

August 15, 2008 19:32

The Second Circuit just reversed a district court decision that had permitted the heirs of John Steinbeck to terminate a copyright grant to Penguin Group.The issue arose from a termination right granted to authors and their heirs that corresponded to the extension of the copyright term. The logic...

Quoting Copyrighted Material In User-Generated Videos

May 25, 2008 21:38

If you represent someone who has gotten into trouble over making YouTube videos, there is an interesting and provocative report out by the Center for Social Media called "Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video." You might want to make it part of your defense...

Bates Numbering with Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro

February 25, 2008 03:18

I have just mastered the Bates-numbering function of Adobe 8 Pro. It enables you to Bates-number large quantities of PDF files. Given that most cases are now filed electronically, this makes it that much easier to never see paper in the office. Adobe lets you place a large number of PDFs into one...