June 29th 2010
We’ve learned that vampires are apparently obsessed with copyright. Now consider the official Twilight t-shirt contest. Fans are invited to make a shirt to promote the new film. Of course, entries must comply with a few rules. (In case you haven’t noticed, vampires are also rather controlling.) Here are some select rules to keep mortals [...]
June 24th 2010
What do the undead think about inside their coffins (or at Starbucks) during daylight hours? Intellectual property, apparently, as evidenced by an unlikely copyright lawsuit. The bloodsuckers at Summit Entertainment, makers of the Twilight vampire movies, have filed a lawsuit against the makers of a jacket worn by a character in their film. The clothing [...]
March 20th 2010
This week, Greenpeace posted a gruesome anti-Nestlé commercial on YouTube complaining that Nestlé SA buys palm oil from companies that destroy the Indonesian rainforest to plant oil palms. The 60-second video depicts a bored office worker enjoying a Kit Kat, which, rather than being the popular chocolate-hazelnut ladyfinger-style confection, appears to be a chocolate-covered ape [...]
March 10th 2010
Remember my 2010 prediction that brand holders should beware of clowns? I called it the Coulrophobia Epidemic of 2010. Logorama did it with trademarks, and won an Oscar. Girl Talk did it with music, gaining top rankings from Rolling Stone, Blender and Time magazine. And now Eric Faden uses the most copyrighted video anywhere, Disney® [...]
November 2nd 2009
Brad Templeton, chairman of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has produced his own “Downfall” parody video, making fun of the fact that Constantin Films has issued DMCA notices to remove all of the “Downfall” parody videos from YouTube. This little-known film has become an Internet sensation and, as I note below, Constantin Film’s [...]
August 15th 2009
Eric Goldman at the Technology & Marketing Law blog recounts a hysterically misguided ruling in Colorado, which holds a hospital liable for trademark and copyright infringement because they mention the ranking they received from a health quality website. You can’t copyright a number Imagine enjoining rock bands from saying Billboard ranked them #1, because that [...]
August 10th 2009
A 50-person law firm with a national practice in asbestos litigation found that the text of its Elder Law website was copied verbatim as the basis for a new site for a firm in another part of the state. The plaintiff firm, Brayton Purcell, filed suit claiming copyright infringement, false advertising, unfair competition and misappropriation. [...]
July 15th 2009
In a ruling that could cause shockwaves throughout the online legal community, a federal judge in Seattle has held that IP addresses are not personally identifiable information. According to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones: “In order for ‘personally identifiable information’ to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies [...]
July 10th 2009
There is a growing disconnect between the legal staff who write terms of use for websites, those who operate the site, and site visitors. I’ve come to believe that each level of disconnection introduces new sets of legal risks, which this story only start to illustrate. Chris Soghoian observed in CNET that Google’s terms of [...]
June 25th 2009
The Republican Governors’ Association has launched an attack website against Democrat New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. The site, called the Corzine Times, is formatted to resemble the New York Times. The grey lady has sent a cease and desist letter to the Republican governors. The demand letter claims trademark infringement, claiming that similar logos and formats [...]
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