Kenneth N. Swezey will co-moderate the panel “E-Books: The Sequel – Rights, Wrongs and Realities” as part of the New York State Bar Association, Entertainment, Arts & Sports Law section’s 2012 Fall Meeting, on Thursday, November 15, 2012 in New York City. The full meeting runs from 3:30pm to 6:45pm, followed by its reception at The Cornell Club on 6 East 44th Street. (“E-Books: The Sequel” is Panel 2 which begins at 5:15 PM till 6:45 PM). Continue reading
A recent case brought against the online retailer Zappos demonstrates the importance of thought-out drafting when constructing website policies. While it may be tempting to leave terms of use as an inconspicuous hyperlink rather than put them right up front, the consequences can be that those terms are not enforceable at all. Continue reading
On May 11, 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia issued its long-awaited opinion in Cambridge University Press v. Becker, No. 1:08-CV-1425-ODE (N.D. Ga. May 11, 2012) which examined one of the new ways professors and students teach and learn in the digital age. Although the court found the University’s copyright policy contributed to copyright infringement on only five of the many claims, the district court applied an unconventional fair use analysis and, among other surprises, extensively examined the availability for licensing of digital excerpts and this may have publishers taking a second look at licensing models for digital versions of works offered to institutions. Universities in turn need to be wary of formulaic fair use guidelines as courts will not generally look at fair use in terms of a fixed percentage of a work, particularly as new licensing models do emerge. Continue reading
Google Cleared of Java Copyright Infringement: In First Ruling on Copyrightability of APIs, CA Court Finds That Functional Java API Code Is a “Method of Operation” Not Protected By Copyright Law Continue reading
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Rules AdWords Program Can Create a Likelihood of Confusion in Rosetta Stone v. Google
By Daniel J. Klein
Google’s AdWords program is no stranger to legal controversy, having been the subject of several trademark infringement lawsuits in the past. Continue reading
On Wednesday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – which oversees the international internet address system — unveiled 1,930 applications it had received for new top-level domain names (TLDs). Dubbed “Reveal Day,” ICANN made public the applications for new domain extensions such as .google, .book, .app, .beer, .bank, .cloud and .buy. The flood of new domains promises to fundamentally change the internet, and certainly for brand owners seeking to protect their trademarks. While businesses previously only needed to monitor misuse of their names in addresses ending with .com or .org, etc., now thousands of new domain extensions may open new vistas for infringers and hackers, in particular cyber-squatters, counterfeiters and phishing-spoofers. Continue reading
In a new turn in the Google Books case we have been following, Google filed its responses on February 17, 2012 to the American Society of Media Photographers’ (ASMP) and the Authors Guild’s oppositions to Google’s motions to dismiss ASMP and the Authors Guild for lack of standing. Google took issue with the Plaintiffs’ assertions. Continue reading
Update: In an update to the below, on Thursday, April 5, 2012, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals revived and remanded the case to a lower court, instructing the district judge to determine if YouTube had knowledge or awareness of specific infringing material and whether it willfully blinded itself to that specific knowledge. Please visit this site for an analysis of this news shortly.
In the ongoing Viacom v. YouTube lawsuit, the case is now on appeal before the Second Circuit. Continue reading
Federal Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, denied Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction to bar Amazon.com from referring to its online software marketplace as an “Appstore” pending the outcome of Apple’s suit regarding the matter. Since 2008, Apple has used the term “App Store” to describe the online location where its shoppers can purchase software applications for their mobile devices (such as the iPhone and iPod). Since then, the online market has become saturated with similar downloadable software applications for mobile devices and online shops to purchase these products. Continue reading