When lawmakers passed the first federal copyright law in 1790 to protect rights in maps, charts and books, they could hardly have conceived of an issue under consideration today: Whether the creations generated by computers using artificial intelligence...
Month: March 2019
Fourth Estate: SCOTUS says registration approach is correct one
The verdict is finally in. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation v. Wall-Street.com, LLC. The court held that to bring a copyright infringement lawsuit under the federal Copyright Act, the Register...
Court greenlights mashup of Seuss and Star Trek as fair use
On March 12, a U.S. District Court in the Southern District of California released an opinion that discusses at length the concept of fair use of a copyrighted work. We have previously written about fair use -- a legal doctrine that allows limited uses of copyrighted...
Can’t trademark your slogan? That’s a pile of covfefe!
When you read this title, with whom or what did you associate "covfefe"? Of course, this is the nonsensical word President Trump used in a tweet, possibly when he was tired and in loose control of his typing fingers. Now people associate it with his persona and...
Court lays out building blocks of trademark law
In October 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit released an opinion in a trademark dispute between Converse and certain shoe competitors over Converse's Chuck Taylor All Star sneaker, sold since 1932 and registered as a design trademark in 2013. The...