As has been noted before, it’s particularly hard for rightsholders to nail down exactly who to blame for copyright violations on the internet. There’s the obvious answer — the people who are actually committing the infringement — but they can be hard to actually track down and are typically just one of thousands doing similarly
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Evel Knievel's Estate Loses Trademark Suit Against Disney
If you’re a company as large as Disney, with as much ownership over wide swaths of TV and cinema and other media as they now possess, you’re going to have some fairly frequent IP run-ins. The most recent case making news was the lawsuit brought against the estates of comic creators seeking to prevent them
Clint Eastwood Wins Judgment Over Misuse of Name and Likeness
You can’t get away with misusing a celebrity’s good (or bad) name, or at least not for long. That name is worth something, and as such celebrities have people dedicated to maintaining it in the press and in any and all business spaces. You can fake an endorsement for a little bit, as we learned
Failed Startup Resurrected to File Patent Infringement Suits?
Most startups fail to survive long term, and the reasons for those failures are as varied as the companies and their products, goals and mission statements. Typically it comes down to money, in the way everything is about money in some form: not having enough money, not being able to convince investors to give them
Copyright Case Highlights the Risks of Stock Photos
A point we’ve made on this blog and website is that you have to be careful when using anything on your website that you haven’t created yourself, or that you haven’t paid someone to create for you (while ensuring they sign over the rights.) Admittedly it’s not a message that the internet as a whole
Gin Maker Faces Trademark Opposition From Red Bull
It’s been a while since the last high profile case of trademark bullying, but like the bullies most of us encountered in the schoolyard, absence doesn’t mean they’ve departed the scene; rather, they’re lying in wait for the next opportune moment, or the next small business that can’t afford to push back against the rather
Model Sues Twitter Over Copyright Infringement By Algorithm
It’s probably not easy to be famous in the age of social media. Certainly it’s easy in the most obvious ways that have carried over for decades: money and some measure of power and certainly free stuff sent to your well-appointed home and invites to the best parties and premieres. But with Facebook and Twitter
University of Kentucky Opposed Trademark Filing From State of Kentucky
We’re in the heart of college football season at the moment, which means everything or nothing to you depending upon where you grew up. If you’re part of the former grouping, you understand just how important Saturdays in fall are to everyone around you, how the fortunes of the college you attended or just support
Marvel Tries To Stop Copyright Termination On Iconic Characters
With a few possible exceptions, it’s hard to imagine that most of the creators of wildly popular innovations know that their ideas are going to be a hit when they first put them out into the world. (The inventor of the wheel, on the other hand, probably knew they landed on a winner pretty quickly.)
Judge Rules Against AI as an Inventor in Patent Case
There’s been a lot of discourse over the past few years about what artificial intelligence can do versus what it should do. Those on the side of the machines see an opportunity for terrific advances, and those opposing are understandably nervous of the notion of technology that can come close to approximating human intelligence, particularly