Enterprising corporations looking to join the “green rush” and cash in on the marijuana boom have found a loophole in the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) refusal to register trademarks for products that contain cannabis.  By registering a trademark for ancillary products not related to marijuana, such as clothing or accessories, corporations can

Earlier today, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a new release of its electronic system used to designate and search for Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) agents. Under the DMCA, a qualified online service provider (OSP) is not liable for copyright infringement with respect to infringing material residing on the OSP’s network if, upon notification of

On May 2nd, The Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) reached an eleventh-hour agreement on a new three-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that averts a pending strike by the writers that was scheduled to begin that day. The agreement was announced in a joint statement by

On April 7, in a decision with far-reaching implications for websites that allow users to post content, the Ninth Circuit reopened a paparazzi photo agency’s copyright lawsuit against the social media website LiveJournal. In doing so, the court reversed a lower court ruling in LiveJournal’s favor. The photo agency, Mavrix Photographs, sued LiveJournal over twenty

One of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (“DMCA”) cardinal features is protection for internet service providers against copyright infringement claims based on content provided by third parties (the “Safe Harbor”).  Without the DMCA Safe Harbor, countless websites that allow their users to upload or post content would risk liability for the actions of those users. 

On April 5th, in a victory for visual content creators and licensors, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by former college athletes alleging that T3Media had misappropriated their names and likenesses by selling licenses to photographs from the NCAA Photo Library. The Ninth Circuit held that the athletes’ claims for right

On April 3, 2017, President Trump officially signed into law a controversial new bill that repeals the Internet privacy rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) in late 2016 (the “FCC Rules”).  The FCC rules, which were set to go into effect in late 2017, required Internet service providers (“ISPs”), such as Verizon, AT&T,

In an opinion issued last week, the Supreme Court held that a “pictorial, graphic, or sculptural” feature incorporated into the design of a useful article—in this case, a cheerleading uniform—is eligible for copyright protection if it satisfies a two-part test: (1) the element can be perceived as a two- or three-dimensional work of art separate

In 2014, the United States Supreme Court, in American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo, Inc., held that unlicensed re-broadcasts of copyrighted content over the Internet constituted public performances of copyrighted works in violation of content owners’ exclusive rights under the Copyright Act; as part of its discussion, the Court analogized services like Aereo’s to “cable services.”  Emboldened

Congratulations!  After months of dreaming about turning your great idea into a real business, you have finally decided to take the plunge and form a company.  After doing some initial research, you have decided to form your company as either a C-Corporation (“C-Corp”) or Limited Liability Company (“LLC”) since both entity structures offer personal liability