On December 21, 2020, Congress passed the long-awaited Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019 (the “CASE Act”), as part of its omnibus spending and COVID-19 relief bill, H.R. 133. The law was enacted on December 27, 2020 and is poised to reform copyright litigation in the United States in the coming year, creating

A statute of limitations is often called a statute of repose, “repose” meaning the “elimination of stale claims, and certainty about a plaintiff’s opportunity for recovery and a defendant’s potential liabilities.”1 By mandating “repose,” a statute of limitations expresses the judicial system’s understanding that, despite its “instinct to provide a remedy  for  every  wrong[,] . .

Like most other providers of interactive computer services, such as websites or mobile applications that allow their users to post or contribute their own content, Twitter through its Terms of Service and community guidelines has long prohibited its users from posting or communicating, among other things, defamatory, profane, infringing, obscene, unlawful, exploitive, harmful, racist, bigoted,

Earlier this week, the Industry-Wide Labor-Management Safety Committee Task Force released proposed policies and guidelines for the recommencement of productions, known as the White Paper. As of June 1, the White Paper was submitted to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and California Governor Gavin Newsom for review. The Task Force, comprised of the Alliance of

While certain states have started to ease lockdowns and shelter-in-place limitations, the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects have taken a toll on many lives, communities, and small businesses. One of the many challenges this unprecedented situation has spawned is how small business will weather the economic downturn it has caused. This situation has been particularly dire for

In a technical win for states facing federal claims under the Copyright Act, on Monday, March 23, 2020, the United States Supreme Court struck down the Copyright Clarification Act of 1990 (the “CRCA”), which had allowed states to be sued in federal court for copyright infringement.  Allen v. Cooper, No. 18-877, 2020 WL 1325815 (U.S.

Having recently attended a symposium co-sponsored by the United States Copyright Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization on Copyright & Artificial Intelligence, Nancy noted that as AI infiltrates modern life, the effects on the content licensing industry, creators and copyright will be enormous. Read all about it here.

For the first time in twenty-two years, the U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion issued yesterday, addressed the question of when an award of attorney’s fees is appropriate under the U.S. Copyright Act. According to the Court, the objective reasonableness of a losing party’s legal positions should be given substantial weight within a broader analysis

Yesterday President Obama signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (“DTSA”), the culmination of several years of bipartisan efforts to federalize trade secret protection, placing it alongside the federal copyright, trademark, and patent statutes.  The DTSA – an extension of the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 – should be significant, generally, to businesses concerned