Last week the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected a 2008 proposed settlement agreement (the “2008 Agreement”) between Google, Inc. and The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.  The suit is based on a class action that alleges Google violated publishers’ and authors’ copyrights in its efforts [...]

Copyright law grants the author/owner of a work the exclusive right to copy, reproduce, and distribute.  Anyone else who wants to use the work must obtain permission from the owner.  However, there is an exception to this rule which is called the Fair Use doctrine.  The Fair Use doctrine allows limited use of a copyrighted [...]

One of our readers has asked the following question: A musician obtains a copyright on a sound recording (music and lyrics) when it is placed on a tangible medium and includes the phrase “copyright/authors/name/date of creation/All Rights Reserved.  Registering the copyright does not give you a “copyright” that carries more legality than the first scenario [...]

   Section 1201 of the copyright law (17 U.S.C. §1201(a)(1)) requires every three years that the Librarian of Congress determine whether there are any classes of works that will be subject to exemptions from prohibition against the circumvention of Digital Rights Management (DRM), which is a form of technology that controls access to a copyrighted work.  [...]

 In June of this year, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down the ruling in the case of Bilski v. Kapos, which as we all hoped, would have provided a clear definition, or test, of what is considered to be patentable subject matter. Unfortunately, the Bilski decision provided little guidance.       The Supreme [...]

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 [...]