Copyright is typically owned by the party who created or authored the work, unless the author assigns the rights, or it is a "work made for hire." A work made for hire is developed or created by an employee whose responsibilities include authoring the subject work or...
Year: 2021
Photographer or model: who owns the rights to a photograph?
Photography, like any other form of art, is subject to intellectual property and copyright law. Photography can involve more than one party when the subject of the art is a person; a model. While the photographer is considered the creator or "author" under copyright...
De minimis use may not be a defense to copyright infringement of a photograph
Scraping a copyrighted photograph from the internet and publicly displaying it (on a website, in an ad, etc.) without the copyright owner's permission amounts to copyright infringement, plain and simple. Sometimes, however, individuals and businesses make the mistake...
Visual artist? You have enforceable “moral rights” in your artwork
A federal law called the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) provides protections for visual artists against physical alteration or false attribution of their artwork (referred to as artists' "moral rights"). These rights are separate and distinct from other copyright...
Significant ways of protecting trade secrets due to departing employees
Trade secrets are the lifeblood of many companies, and they include confidential information like procedures, processes, methods, formulas, business plans and internal marketing data. It is vital to protect this crucial information from competitors for sustainability...
Safeguarding your startup’s intellectual property
It's no secret that the Bay Area is home to virtually thousands of startups, incubators and think tanks, producing a limitless number of cutting-edge ideas and technologies every day. While startups are consumed with vital tasks like obtaining investment and bringing...
Does my U.S registered trademark protect me in other countries?
A trademark is a sign or mark that helps the consumer to distinguish goods and services from different businesses. The trademarks are protected from infringement by intellectual property rights. Your U.S registered trademark only offers valuable protection against any...
The Right of Publicity and how it protects against commercial use
The Right of Publicity is not a federal right, instead, it is protected by state common or statutory law. In California, there are two types of Right of Publicity law, a statute and a common law right. The statutory Right of Publicity This statute protects a person's...
Nondisclosure agreements in California
Most companies have valuable confidential information or trade secrets which they protect from being leaked to the public. In business transactions, companies receive and exchange private information with their customers or suppliers. To prevent unauthorized...
What’s involved in a copyright infringement claim?
Copyright is a form of intellectual property law that protects an author's original works, such as dramatic, musical, literary and visual works of art, from unauthorized use. It covers both published and unpublished work but does not protect facts, ideas, methods of...