Lately there have been a few suits popping up involving well-known rap artists allegedly infringing the copyrights of others.  Where this typically occurs is when rap artist, rap over popular melodies of older songs.  One must bear in mind that many of the melodies are still subject to copyright protection and as such the artist can be sued for copyright infringement.  Absent an agreement to the contrary, copyright inures to the benefit of the author of the work.  It is not necessary to register a copyright to have rights in it.  You do need a registration to sue someone or to be entitled to statutory damages.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 2:53 pm by rrm407 and is filed under Copyright, Intellectual Property. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.