Artist Steven Gardner was not pleased to find Cafe Press selling merchandise bearing four of his illustrations on www.cafepress.com, without his permission.  Gardner filed a copyright action against CafePress, and Cafe Press moved to dismiss, claiming that it was only acting at the direction of its users and could not be liable for direct infringement. 

PART ONE The market for quality narrative television has heated up globally over the past few years. Fueled by the emergence of new digital platforms and business models, the reliance of multiplexes on blockbuster genre films, and the growth of “binge viewing” of TV content, audiences have become increasingly hungry for high quality, serialized content

A growing and unsettling trend in the legal field of domain name disputes is the prevalence of domain registration for bad faith purposes, such as to bait the public into thinking that there is an association between a website operator and a famous brand or person.  Recently, Cowan DeBaets Abraham & Sheppard LLP (“CDAS”) brought

This Blog is an Update to a Previous Post. To read the original post, please click here. Jordan v. Jewel Food Stores, Inc., No. 10-c-340 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 12, 2015) Following the Seventh Circuit decision that permitted Jordan to proceed and allege violations under Illinois publicity law against the supermarket chain Jewel-Osco, Jordan moved for

Music “plagiarism” copyright infringement cases are not uncommon, and have made a comeback in recent years.  Artists from Led Zeppelin (Randy Craig Wolfe Trust v. Led Zeppelin (“Stairway to Heaven”)), to Avril Lavigne (Dunbar v. Gottwald (Lavigne’s “Girlfriend”)), to Jessie J (Loomis v. Cornish (Jessie J’s “Domino”)) have lately become embroiled in legal battles over

On January 21, 2015, in its first substantive trademark ruling in more than a decade, the United States Supreme Court unanimously held that the question of “tacking” – a doctrine by which a brand owner may modify its mark overtime without disrupting its priority of rights – is a factual one, more appropriately suited for

Note: This blog is cross-posted from Law360.com with permission from Portfolio Media, Inc. For decades, obtaining an injunction in a copyright or trademark case was simple: Show success on the merits (or likely success on the merits, at the preliminary injunction stage), and injunctive relief was usually automatically yours. Then, in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a

A New York federal judge recently ruled in favor of Sony Music Entertainment (“SME”) in the latest dispute over the proper characterization of artist royalties on digital music sales, dismissing a breach of contract claim brought by rock group Toto (best known for the hits “Africa” and “Rosanna”). Ever since the Ninth Circuit’s 2010 decision