North Carolina, the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, and various state officials acting in their official capacities—who were sued in a copyright infringement action brought by a videographer and his affiliate who produced photos and videos depicting a salvaged ship of Blackbeard the pirate—were entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit in…
Real estate photographers failed to provide evidence that software provider CoreLogic, Inc., removed copyright management information (CMI) from licensed photos posted to listing services by real estate agents using CoreLogic’s software with the requisite mental state for liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the U. S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has…
Rapper Jay-Z has won another round in his defense against claims that he infringed the copyright in a 1957 arrangement of an Egyptian composer’s song, “Khosara, Khosara” when he used a sample from the arrangement in the background music to his hit single “Big Pimpin’.” The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco affirmed a…
On 4 June 2018, one of the core concepts of copyright – the copyright work – was disputed at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The “cheese battle”, which started in 2015 at the Court of First Instance in Gelderland (the Netherlands) between HEKS’NKAAS (applicant) and ‘Witte Wievenkaas’ (defendant), resulted in a…
The Supreme Court clarified the circumstances under which private copying levies should be paid by importers of cell phones, and reached the conclusion that if two technically independent devices have such a close connection that they together make up one device, such device could be subject to the provisions regarding private copying levies. Case date: 29…
The Tallinn Circuit Court finally and definitively determined the action in the “blank tape levy” court case. This landmark court case had been pending since February 2013, when the authors’, performers’ and phonogram producers’ collecting societies initially filed their complaint against the Government of the Republic of Estonia. During the litigation, the case was reviewed…
This post was first published on the Kluwer Trademark Blog In a judgement of April 2018, the Regional Court of Hamburg has ruled on the use of original advertising material by non-authorized dealers and on how trademark law can bypass copyright law (308 O 231/16). The plaintiff manufactures saddle bags and other high quality cycling…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the top 3 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the top posts from March, April and May. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
The dismissal of a copyright infringement plaintiff’s claims against music publisher Sony Corporation of America and other related defendants pursuant to a mandatory arbitration provision in the agreement that the plaintiff had signed upon entering Sony’s songwriting contest did not warrant an award of attorney fees to Sony as a prevailing party under the Copyright…
A lawsuit brought by figure skater Oksana Baiul accusing NBC Sports of failing to pay her royalties owed for a video production of her ice skating performance in “Nutcracker on Ice” was barred by res judicata, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has held. A decision of the federal district court in Los…
