Although the author worked under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement when he penned the movie, the right to ownership was governed by copyright law and not labor law. The writer of the screenplay for Friday the 13th, the classic summer camp thriller that spawned a generation of equally campy horror films, was entitled to…
De minimis analysis involves the substantiality of the copying, not the use to which the infringing work is put; by definition, wholesale copying of a protected work cannot be de minimis copying. A company that owned a website on which it unknowingly displayed a photographer’s photo without authorization could not assert a de minimis defense…
Heirs of “Game of Life” developer failed to overcome work-for-hire doctrine in bid to terminate developer’s original transfer of rights to Hasbro predecessor. The federal district court in Providence, Rhode Island, correctly determined that heirs of toy developer Bill Markham could not reacquire copyrights to the boardgame “The Game of Life” from Hasbro, Inc., and…
Welcome to the third trimester of 2021 round up of EU copyright law! In this series we update readers every three months on developments in EU copyright law. This includes Court of Justice (CJEU) and General Court judgments, Advocate Generals’ (AG) opinions, and important policy developments. You can read the first and second trimester round…
In July this year, the Federal Court of Australia handed down a decision in Stephen L. Thaler [2021] APO 5, which allowed listing AI system DABUS as an inventor in a patent application. It is interesting to explore what implications this decision could have in the field of copyright. About the DABUS decision The DABUS case refers…
Although the contract between a makeup artist and her publisher described the artist as the author of the book, the dispute still arose under the Copyright Act because “author” is a term defined under the Act. The dispute between a makeup artist and her publisher over ownership of the copyright to a makeup guide raised…
Like most copyright systems, French copyright law does not leave much room for the freedom of authors of transformative graphic works (also called “derivative works”). Three interesting cases on derivative works, two involving Jeff Koons and one Tintin, have recently put French copyright law in the international spotlight (e.g. here and here). The American transformative…
On 17 June 2021, the CJEU delivered its judgment in C-597/19 Mircom. It held that uploading (including automatic uploading) of pieces of a file containing a protected work on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks infringes the making available right under article 3(1) and (2) of the InfoSoc Directive when a user actively chooses to use sharing software…
A builder of sunrooms allegedly adapted the brochure for online use without permission, but the designer’s application with the Copyright Office was still pending when she filed suit. A graphic designer’s copyright infringement claim against a builder of sunroom additions—which allegedly modified and used online a print brochure that she had designed for the builder—was…
Welcome to the second trimester of 2021 round up of EU copyright law! Apologies to readers that this one comes a bit late. In this series, we update readers every three months on developments in EU copyright law. This includes Court of Justice (CJEU) and General Court judgments, Advocate Generals’ (AG) opinions, and important policy…
