Under the Copyright Act, anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner is an infringer of the copyright. On top of that, the Supreme Court has also recognized two categories of secondary liability. Secondary liability happens when a party is liable for the copyright infringement of another. Those two categories are “contributory” … Read more
There is a common assumption in the business world: If you paid for it, you own it. As laid out in one of Erin’s earlier posts, that is not always a case with IP. To quickly summarize, the default under copyright law is that whoever creates the thing owns the copyright, even if someone else paid to have it created. The exception to this is a “work made for … Read more
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a part of the tools we use every day. AI can be found on our computers, our phones, our cars, and beyond. As AI systems grow more advanced, it becomes increasingly appealing to rely on them to generate content, ideas, and even finished works with little to no human … Read more
When most of us think about figure skating at the Winter Olympic Games, we picture elite athletes, dramatic performances, and unforgettable routines. However, in recent years, an important issue has emerged: complex copyright disputes. For decades, copyright music licensing was rarely an issue in competitive skating. This is because the International Skating Union (ISU) prohibited … Read more
More and more, I hear some version of the same question from business owners: “We made something valuable with the help of AI. Can we protect it?” Sometimes the “something” is obvious, like marketing copy, a logo, a photo, a product description, a training guide, or software code. Sometimes it is less obvious but more … Read more
I’ve been thinking about the clash between generative AI and copyright law, particularly in light of OpenAI’s claim that restricting access to copyrighted material could end the AI race altogether. It’s a provocative statement. But it’s also a false binary. Because we’ve been here before – at the edge of a new medium, a new … Read more
Copyright law can be a bit convoluted, but occasionally, the legislature does things that actually simplify life. One thing they did was to make all the copyrights expire on December 31 rather than throughout the year. The 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act gave works published or registered before 1978 a 95-year term, expiring on January … Read more
As a firm of trademark and alcohol attorneys, it’s always a thrill when those two topics collide, especially on a major stage. We had one of those great moments of serendipity last week. The story begins with Diageo, the company that owns Bulleit Frontier Whiskey, a brand of whiskey that might be familiar to our … Read more
Can trademarks and sports mix? To address this question, I wanted to dive in with several case studies: Of course, this Cheesehead cannot help but talk about the Green Bay Packers! The Packers’ notable trademark is it’s original one where it claims the services of “entertainment services in the form of professional football games and … Read more
Today’s post revisits something discussed several years ago on this blog: fair use. If you are looking for background or further reading, check out Erin’s posts here, here, and here, as well as Collin’s post here. As a quick TL;DR to those previous posts, fair use is a defense to copyright infringement claims for a … Read more