Category: Intellectual Property Law

We’ve all heard of patent trolls. Wikipedia defines them as a party (often a shell company) who purchases patents from usually bankrupt companies for the express purpose of suing other parties claiming damages for infringement, knowing that it is more likely those parties will pay to settle out than proceed

On June 16, 2022, the U.S. Copyright Office launched the Copyright Claims Board (CCB) online. Now, claimants may file small claims alleging copyright infringement of registered (or pending*) works and request monetary compensation. We have been following the CCB since it was written into legislation and earlier, when Register Maria

There is a movie franchise starring Noah Wyle called The Librarian that romanticizes the role that these information technicians play in day to day lives. In truth, librarians have been called upon in recent years to serve as activists, defending our freedom of expression, and freedom to read for all.

As one of my law school professors used to say, “Where there’s a hit, there’s a writ.” A writ is a form of legal petition. Most people have heard of a writ of certiorari or habeas corpus. But in this case, we have the box office hit, credited with the

As Justice Breyer retires from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), copyright enthusiasts reflect on his opinions over the years (and his teaching lessons at Harvard!). One of this author’s favorite sayings appears in his opinion in MGM v Grokster (2005), which established liability for infringement where an

In January, we learned that the Copyright Office intended to solicit comments from the public about a rule it is proposing as part of its rulemaking under the Case Act (Copyright Alternative for Small Claims Enforcement) signed into law last December 2020. Over 5,000 comments were submitted and about 17

Last fall, we documented how certain world-class art museums asserted their rights over images in their artworks collections by pornography companies in an effort to generate new audiences in classical artworks using online platforms. Never the less, images removed, the question surfaces, how much control exactly do museums have over

In what may be the most anticipated report of the year so far for copyright enthusiasts, YouTube released its Copyright Transparency Report documenting the number of claims filed and where such claims originated (e.g. Content ID, Copyright Match, Webform) for the first half of 2021. A staggering 722+ million claims

What do Louis Armstrong, Jim Morrison, and Igor Stravinsky have in common? They all died in 1971…