The 1970s were the heyday of the now-extinct television genre known as the variety show: a weekly extravaganza headlined by a well-known entertainer, generally accompanied by a supporting cast of singers, dancers and...more
6/6/2024
/ Artists ,
Celebrities ,
Community Property ,
Copyright ,
Divorce ,
Entertainment Industry ,
Estate Planning ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Music ,
Music Industry ,
Royalties ,
Settlement Agreements ,
Sound Recording Copyrights ,
The Copyright Act
In a mashup that the late pop artist Andy Warhol surely would have loved, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has applied the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v....more
For 48 years, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has held that if a trademark registrant files a fraudulent declaration under Section 15 of the Lanham Act to make its...more
The Supreme Court’s decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith issued earlier today is chock full of references to famous artists, famous works of art, famous musicians and famous celebrities...more
It is not every day that Supreme Court oral arguments include references to The Lord of the Rings (both the books and the movies!), the Syracuse University athletic program, Mork and Mindy, All in the Family, Norman...more
Hyperbolic descriptions of the supposed importance of cases dealing with intellectual property rights are as numerous as they are unfounded, but that is not true when it comes to The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual...more
As of today, there have been twelve (yes, twelve!) movies released as part of the Friday the 13th series of horror films, as well as a television series. For those of you who have not seen any of these films, they are not for...more
10/13/2021
/ Appeals ,
Contract Termination ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Litigation ,
Copyright Ownership ,
Derivative Works ,
Employment Contract ,
Film Industry ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Screenplays ,
The Copyright Act
An important decision by the Second Circuit in The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, Case No. 19-2420-cv (2d Cir. Mar. 26, 2021), has, in important respects, upended how the defense of fair use is...more
In a case of first impression at the appellate level, the First Circuit recently issued a decision highlighting that U.S. copyright law authorizes implied, not merely express, sublicenses of copyrighted works. Photographic...more
This morning, the Supreme Court resolved a longstanding circuit split about whether a copyright infringement plaintiff must first obtain a registration from the Copyright Office for the work upon which its claim is based...more
3/5/2019
/ Appeals ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Exhaustion ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Copyright Registration ,
Damages ,
Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp v Wall-Street.com LLC ,
Petition for Writ of Certiorari ,
Popular ,
SCOTUS ,
Solicitor General ,
Split of Authority ,
The Copyright Act ,
Uniformity
In the latest chapter of a long-running trademark dispute involving the outsole used by Converse, Inc. with its well-known CHUCK TAYLOR shoes, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued a ruling vacating an...more
11/1/2018
/ Appeals ,
Fashion Branding ,
Fashion Design ,
Fashion Industry ,
International Trade Commission (ITC) ,
Likelihood of Confusion ,
Remand ,
Third-Party ,
Trade Dress ,
Trademark Infringement ,
Trademark Litigation ,
Trademarks
It is hard to imagine that any one person could initiate separate lawsuits resulting in decisions of substantial importance to the entire U.S. entertainment industry. And when that person is iconic actress Olivia de...more
For more than seven decades, the Arts sections of the New York Times featured cartoons by the famous artist Al Hirschfeld, whose works were celebrated for their clean crisp lines, as well as the artist’s penchant for...more
While all the world might be a stage, the famous U.K. fashion house Burberry Limited has now established that none of its players – except Burberry – has the right in the U.S. to use the famous Burberry trademark as a stage...more
Is the New York City Marathon running an illegal lottery? According to a class action complaint filed in the Southern District of New York last week, the answer is “yes”....more
It may come as a surprise that the answer to the above question is yes, or so a number of plaintiffs claim in lawsuits that have been filed recently in the U.S. More specifically, in the U.S. District Court for the Western...more
Starting next week, businesses running contests and sweepstakes on Facebook will not be allowed to require users to “like” their pages as a condition of entry to a promotion. This practice, known as “like-gating,” has been...more
In a significant victory for the broadcast industry, the Supreme Court has held in a 6-3 decision that Aereo’s TV streaming service is a public performance within the meaning of the Copyright Act. Aereo operates massive...more