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The high-profile Supreme Court case between tech giants Oracle and Google has kicked into high gear. Last week the Supreme Court received over 30 filings in support of Oracle, from luminaries in law and technology, prominent former Members of Congress, and even the Trump administration. This is especially noteworthy because the Obama administration also supported Oracle’s position in a previous filing. The case arises from Google’s copying of 11,500 lines of Oracle’s computer code, known as “declaratory code,” to use in the Android platform. Google is using this litigation as an opportunity to argue for narrow intellectual property rights and...

As the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, thousands of copyrighted works will finally enter the public domain. That includes books, movies, sheet music, and all sorts of creative works, first published in the U.S. in 1924. When a work enters the public domain, it’s no longer protected by copyright. The public can use and consume it, without permission and at no cost. Without the public domain, we wouldn’t have so much art that riffs on the work of authors including Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare. These mass expirations used to happen every year. But in 1998, Congress passed...

One would hope that Google would understand the value and importance of copyrights. After all, the search engine giant handles about 2 million copyright takedown notices each day. “Copyrightability” is clearly a fundamental aspect of the company’s business model—a fact that makes some of Google’s recent decisions all the more surprising. Currently, the search engine company is embroiled in a high stakes legal battle over the very issue of copyright protection. Headed for a showdown at the United States Supreme Court, the lawsuit—Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc.—will no doubt establish lasting precedent about the relationship between businesses and their intellectual property....

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to approve a measure that would shake up the Copyright Office if it were made into law, creating a small claims court where online content creators can go after their infringers. The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act, or the CASE Act for short, was approved by 410-6 vote. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) introduced the measure last year with the goal of giving graphic artists, photographers, and other content creators a more efficient pathway toward receiving damages if their works are infringed. Under current law, all copyright suits must go through the...

The recent use of the term "basket of deplorables" by China's state-run Global Times has spurred former unsuccessful presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to consider suing for "theft of intellectual property. I coined that phrase to describe the lowlifes who supported my opponent in the 2016 election. It is outrageous that it would be re-used without paying me royalties." Observers have expressed skepticism that any prospective lawsuit could be successful. CNN's Chris Cuomo cited China's "blatant disregard for intellectual property rights as one indicator of the improbable odds for getting a reasonable response on Sec. Clinton's complaint. I also can't help...

Twitter took down a meme tweeted by President Donald Trump, in which the music video for Nickelback's hit 2005 song "Photograph" was edited to attack former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump tweeted the clip Wednesday. At the moment where singer Chad Kroeger holds up a photo frame, the image was edited to show Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and a Ukrainian gas company board member, seeming to cast doubt on assertions by Biden that he never spoke to Hunter about his business overseas.

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, August 27, 2019 Eight Defendants Charged with Running Two of the Largest Illegal Television Show and Movie Streaming Services in the United States The Two Services Allegedly Offered More Television Programs and Movies than Legitimate Streaming Services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime Video A federal grand jury returned an indictment today charging eight individuals with conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law by running two of the largest unauthorized streaming services in the United States, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars by television...

A bi-partisan bill working its way through Congress could drastically change how copyright claims are processed, and would create a system to impose up to $30,000 in fines on anyone who shares protected material online. In other words, the Congress wants to make it easier to sue people who send a meme or post images that they didn’t create themselves, essentially a giveaway to lawyers who sue unsuspecting suckers for a living. The Senate Judiciary Committee last week approved the “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019,” which “creates a voluntary small claims board within the Copyright Office that...

The Senate Judiciary Committee intends to vote on the CASE Act, legislation that would create a brand new quasi-court for copyright infringement claims. We have expressed numerous concerns with the legislation, and serious problems inherent with the bill have not been remedied by Congress before moving it forward. In short, the bill would supercharge a “copyright troll” industry dedicated to filing as many “small claims” on as many Internet users as possible in order to make money through the bill’s statutory damages provisions. Every single person who uses the Internet and regularly interacts with copyrighted works (that’s everyone) should contact...

Genius.com, a site specialising in providing song lyrics, had suspected that Google had been scraping its site and using the lyrics to populate the 'information panels' often seen in the side of search results. This isn't that uncommon, but usually Google credits the source; in this case, Genius was getting no credit. Sure enough, Google pulled the lyric through and repeated the message, without ever knowing that's what it had done. But Genius wasn't going to take that lying down. The company wanted to prove that Google was indeed sourcing uncredited, and set about proving it by matching high tech...

A Texas appeals court has ruled that the University of Houston does not have to pay the photographer of a picture it has been using in online and print promotional materials. Houston photographer Jim Olive says the university removed copyright markings from an image downloaded from his stock library, failed to credit him when it was used and wouldn’t pay when he sent a bill, but the university claims it has sovereign immunity and that it can’t be sued. The case surrounds an aerial image Olive shot from a helicopter hired specifically for making pictures for his library. In an...

Craig S. Wright has been granted U.S. copyright registrations for the famed original Bitcoin white paper, and most of the original Bitcoin code (version 0.1). Importantly, the registrations issued by the U.S. Copyright Office recognize Wright as the author – under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto – of both the white paper and code. This is the first government agency recognition of Craig Wright as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. In addition to being Bitcoin’s creator, Wright is currently Chief Scientist of nChain, the global leader in advisory, research and development of blockchain technologies, which focuses on massive adoption of...

The European Union's new Copyright Directive stands to dramatically change the way we consume news and other online content. Although originally intended to ensure creators and news organizations are fairly compensated for their work, the directive will more likely make quality news harder to find, throw financial and technical roadblocks in the way of smaller online publishers and creators, stifle free speech and negatively impact internet culture. Article 11 requires online news aggregators like Google, Facebook or Twitter to pay licensing fees to news organizations when showing snippets of their coverage, and forces news organizations to charge these fees. ....

Music Modernization Act Signing Ceremony. With Kid Rock, Michael Love and other musicians standing beside, President Trump Signs the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act

Beijing leans on an array of levers to extract intellectual property—sometimes coercively DuPont Co. suspected its onetime partner in China was getting hold of its prized chemical technology, and spent more than a year fighting in arbitration trying to make it stop. Then, 20 investigators from China’s antitrust authority showed up. For four days this past December, they fanned out through DuPont’s Shanghai offices, demanding passwords to the company’s world-wide research network, say people briefed on the raid. Investigators printed documents, seized computers and intimidated employees, accompanying some to the bathroom. Beijing leans on an array of levers to pry...

“Real estate brokers and agents invest resources into obtaining property listings,” wrote NAR, which counts 1.3 million real estate agents as members. As such, NAR said agents have “rights and responsibilities to control the distribution of their listings.” Any “appropriation of a commercial entity’s data, work product, or intellectual property for exploitation by another commercial entity is not justified,” NAR added. But while Zillow argued for the “democratization” of data, NAR said calls for greater access to MLS data are “based on faulty expectations that unrestricted access to listing data will help consumers.” Instead, NAR said, “forcing brokers to provide...

The phrase "haters gonna hate" is too "banal" to be copyrighted, a US judge has declared. Judge Michael W Fitzgerald made the comments while dismissing a copyright case against Taylor Swift. Songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler sued the star last year, arguing her single Shake It Off stole from their composition, Playas Gon' Play. They said the chorus of her song relied on their lyric, "playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate". Although short phrases are generally immune from copyright claims, the writers argued that combining the two thoughts was original enough to warrant protection. Fitzgerald disagreed...

On January 23rd, a jury verdict entered in the Central District of California awarded $710,000 in damages for trademark and copyright infringement to Grumpy Cat Limited, the entity holding the rights to the Internet cat celebrity Grumpy Cat. The lawsuit targeted the sale of unlicensed coffee beverages marketed under the Grumpy Cat name by a Los Angeles-area beverage company. The complaint filed in December 2015 notes, the firm entered into a license agreement with Grenade Beverage in May 2013, which granted Grenade limited rights to the copyrights and trademarks covering the cat’s name and image to develop a line of...

Providing a link to content is a pretty standard way of pointing your friends, family, or colleagues to an interesting article you read, a funny picture you saw, or information you want to share. I know that I provide links on a daily basis, including them in blog posts, emails, articles, and briefs, or on Facebook and Twitter. While I assume that the material I share does not infringe copyright, to be honest, I typically don’t give it much thought when I share an interesting blog post or a stunning picture by providing the link to the page I originally...

Pepe is striking back! Late Tuesday evening, the mischievous frog meme appeared on the front of WilmerHale headquarters — the law firm representing Pepe’s creator.