While brand owners often benefit from the endorsement of online and social media “influencers,” such endorsements must not mislead consumers as to the relationship between the brand and individual endorsing the brand’s products or services. To ensure that “material connections” between brands and influencers are clearly and fully disclosed, the FTC has put forth guidelines

On Monday a California appeals court handed down a decision in the closely watched case of de Havilland v. FX Networks, LLC et al., triggering a collective sigh of relief from studios, networks, and other content producers. The court’s decision reaffirms two widely recognized principles: (1) that the First Amendment’s protection of creative works is

MoviePass, the subscription movie ticket and streaming service, has grown its user base exponentially in recent months, but it may become a victim of its own success. The $7.95 per month service, which supplies its users with an unlimited number of monthly movie theater tickets and access to streaming content, has over two million users

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit today issued its much-anticipated opinion in the TVEyes appeal, reversing the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and holding that TVEyes’ copying, storage, and re-distribution for viewing, downloading, and sharing, of massive amounts of copyrighted TV

Update to November 17, 2017 Post. Last week, Judge Forrest of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Goldman v. Breitbart News, LLC – one of a pair of cases pending in Manhattan federal court concerning the practice of “embedding” copyrighted content – issued a ruling in favor of the

In a rare show of bipartisanship, Congress has proposed legislation that would financially benefit music creators who have either been overlooked in the past or are compensated on inconsistent terms.  Three bills –  the Fair Play, Fair Pay Act, the CLASSICS Act and the Music Modernization Act (all of which have bipartisan support) – were

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently affirmed a lower-court decision that Viacom’s use of the trademark “BUBBLE GUPPIES” for promotional merchandise for its show of the same name did not infringe on a children’s clothing brand that had registered the trademark “GUPPIES,” primarily because the “GUPPIES” mark – which had been

On January 9th, Kodak announced its intention to enter the cryptocurrency craze by developing a blockchain-based service that presumably allow participating photographers to get paid each time their licensed work is used on the Internet without their prior consent. As described on the company’s website, the digital platform, currently referred to as KODAKOne, will “provide

On January 26, 2018, the United States Copyright Royalty Board (the “CRB”) released its initial determination regarding the royalty rates and terms of use that will apply over the next five years to the compulsory license of musical compositions in connection with the distribution of physical and digital phonorecords (sound recordings not accompanying an audio-visual

Sexual assault and harassment complaints in the Hollywood working world are up 500 percent for SAG-AFTRA in the post-Harvey Weinstein era.  The pressure is present and growing for companies whose executives, employees, and/or talent have been accused of, or have been victims of such assaults.  For example, following the firing of The Today Show co-anchor