Article Archive for April 2012
This year’s Coachella music festival has its share of intellectual property issues. Attorneys for the festival have recently cracked down on counterfeit goods and asked a federal court judge to issue a preliminary injunction against certain vendors.
Music giant EMI filed a lawsuit in New York federal court in late March alleging substantial damages from the unlicensed use of songs in Def Jam’s new video game, Def Jam Rapstar.
Recently I wrote about Apple’s ongoing iPad trademark issues with Proview. In an update to this story, a Chinese court is attempting to mediate a dispute between the parties and encouraging settlement.
German court finds that YouTube has made insufficient efforts to combat the uploading of copyrighted material
A new religion from Sweden is based on file-sharing. Could it provide First Amendment protection to converts and their hard drives?
Court hears Gucci’s suit against Guess for using “studied initiations” on its products
The American University Intellectual Property Brief is now accepting staff applications for the 2012-2013 year! Applications are due April 22, 2012 at 5pm. Please see: http://www.ipbrief.net/available-positions
Francis Ford Coppola is suing a small Italian restaurant over its name, Tavola, arguing that he owns a trademark in the term. But does he?
Tupac’s holographic performance at Coachella rocked the concert and intellectual property laws. The public performance implicates copyright laws through exclusive rights licensing issues and the rights of publicity through copying of a likeness. As hologram technology progresses, copyright and right of publicity laws will be tested in new ways.
One-time partners Microsoft and Motorola Mobility are going all out in their patent lawsuits with Microsoft seeking to ban Motorola Mobility phone sales in the U.S. and Motorola Mobility seeking to block sales of Windows 7 and Xbox in Germany. In an interesting strategy, Microsoft has blocked a German court’s ruling through a U.S. lawsuit over contracts.
