The paintings, although temporary, had achieved “recognized stature” as artworks and were protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act. Artists who created “aerosol art” paintings on the exteriors of buildings in the well-known “5Pointz” area of Long Island City, New York, with the consent of the buildings’ owners, were properly granted $6.75 million in statutory…
On 28 March 2019, the German Federal Court (BGH) was asked to review a lower court’s decision on the legality of the unauthorised uploading of the 30 day free trial version of Microsoft software on an online trader’s website. This gave the BGH the chance to further clarify the applicability of the German Copyright Act…
Part I of this post provided an overview of the facts of the case and the recent opinion of AG Campos Sanchez-Bordona. Overall, the opinion is a mixed result. It makes some good points but also some ill-judged ones, and these will be explored in more detail in this post. Let us start with the positive…
This case concerned the famous Brompton bicycle which can be folded to carry away after use (Case C‑833/18, SI, Brompton Bicycle Ltd. v. Chedech / Get2Get). The bike was once protected by a patent and, following its expiry, the defendant (Chedech/Get2Get) embarked on selling a similar bike in Belgium (the designs of the two bikes…
In Response Clothing Ltd v The Edinburgh Woollen Mill Ltd [2020] EWHC 148, His Honour Judge Hacon (“HHJ Hacon”) found that copyright subsisted in a fabric design as a work of artistic craftmanship and that the sale of garments made from such fabric amounted to copyright infringement. The case is an interesting development in English law…
Hospital infringed on credentialing service’s copyright by using forms, but the infringement began when the forms were not yet registered. A medical credentialing support service is barred from recovering statutory damages and attorney’s fees for a hospital’s use of its credentialing forms after their relationship ended, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit…
Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ was a giant hit of the last decade, a runaway success story – well almost. There is a fly in the ointment. Sami Chokri (a.k.a. Sami Switch) is claiming Sheeran and his fellow songwriters infringed his copyright, copying part of the chorus of ‘Oh Why’. You can hear the two…
Factual questions precluded deciding novel legal issues regarding the scope of MMA’s preemption of state-law infringement claims involving pre-1972 sound recordings and whether Pandora qualified for the preemption defense. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has returned a case to the federal district court in Los Angeles to consider in the first instance…
Relying on obviously insufficient oversight mechanisms for discovering copyright infringement can constitute willful infringement. A California district court erred when it reduced a $460,800 jury verdict by $109,700 for lack of proof of willful infringement in a copyright infringement suit by Greg Young Publishing, Inc., against online marketplace Zazzle because recklessness can constitute willful infringement,…
The recent decision in Warner Music & another v TuneIn Inc [2019] EWHC 2923 (ch), was the first time the English Courts have forensically assessed the implications of CJEU decisions such as GS Media and Svensson on communication to the public over the internet. Many of us have been left bemused by the concepts the…
