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Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, More Fair Use Before SCOTUS
All eyes were on SCOTUS yesterday as the court heard arguments in the Warhol Prince case. I always look forward to copyright judgments from this court. This is another case on the application of the fair use doctrine or what I endearingly call, the “whatever-you-can-get-away-with doctrine”. Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. v. Goldsmith is a copyright dispute over a photograph of the musician Prince. The issue before the court is to decide whether a work of art is “transformative” when it conveys a different meaning or message from its source material (as the Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and other courts of…
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Facebook Hit With $175M Patent Infringement Verdict In Instagram Live
The $175M verdict awarded yesterday by an Austin, TX jury in favor of walkie-talkie company Voxer is the latest in the IP infringement portfolio of Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, this time for using communications technology patented by Voxer in its Facebook Live and Instagram Live features. Voxer first filed its lawsuit against Facebook in 2020. In its initial 2020 complaint Voxer alleged that its founder, an army veteran named Tom Katis, began developing communications tech in 2006 after witnessing shortcomings in walkie-talkie technology during his service in Afghanistan. The complaint further laid out that the Voxer app was launched in 2011 and that Facebook representatives got in touch with…
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Galaxy Report On NFT Rights; What About Web3 to Web2 User Generated Content
For some reason, many people still believe that buying an NFT gives them ownership over intellectual property in original works. The Galaxy Report may have found the culprit of this widespread misconception: intentional misrepresentation. As if you didn’t know that buying an mp3 doesn’t give you IP rights to the song encoded in it. You know it full well, because when you post the song on Twitch, someone will come and take it down, even though you bought the game that included the song. Right! Why would an NFT be any different? Because it is more expensive? Since when buying an expensive painting gives you the right to reproduce that…
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Miramax and Tarantino Lawsuit To Clarify NFT Rights
Since last year’s NFT craze, it is customary to mint unique NFT’s from original storylines and film characters as cross promotion of new and upcoming films. However, misconceptions around NFT rights (being seen as a new form of intellectual property which they aren’t), has given some individuals impetus to mint pre-existing IP rights that don’t belong to them or that have been assigned to movie studios. This is what Miramax contends Quentin Tarantino did when he launched a series of NFT’s from handwritten portions of his original screenplay, Pulp Fiction. On a first sight, it may seem that Miramax should already have all the rights in any NFT a filmmaker,…
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$23M Royalties Scam On Youtube – Tip of The Iceberg – Reveals Voluntary Blindness
On Youtube, just about anyone can claim copyright in just about any video for the purpose of monetizing, regardless of whether they own a fragment of a copyright or not. You will only hear about it when someone gets too greedy (in the range of $23M) after claiming over 50,000 copyrights, buying a series of very expensive cars, getting noticed and investigated by the IRS and at least one District Attorney, and attracting over 30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft. The point is, Youtube knows about it and allows it! Here is how it’s done: If you ever uploaded a video on Youtube, you…
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Metaverse Fashion Week 2022 and What on Earth Are NFT’s?
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Metaverse Fashion Week 2022 and What on Earth Are NFT’s?
The Jonathan Simkhai Online Store features both virtual and regular designs. My last post on the metaverse turned into a 3000 word paper, but we only covered part of the foundation of the metaverse. I’ll take the opportunity in this post to discuss non fungible tokens (NFT). Take a deep breath. We saw that the metaverse is a spatial environment that mimics the real world by providing virtual social possibilities and simultaneously incorporating some gaming or simulation type of experiences for players to enjoy. Three dimensional shared realities, like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have historically been reserved to the gaming industry. Chasing Pokemons outdoors, dressing up avatars, playing e-sports…
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Protected: Queering: From Alt-Art to Mainstream
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Privilege in IP Litigation
Section 16.1(1) of the Patent Act was last amended in 2016 to extend privilege to communications made for the purpose of seeking or giving advice with respect to any matter relating to the proection of an invention. In Janssen Inc and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp v. Sandoz Canaa Inc., 2021 FC 1265, the Federal Court was asked to interpreted the new section 16.1(1) in order to assess the scope of privilege to be applied to communications with a patent agent. The Federal Court found that the new section excludes a “non-infringement opinion for a product”, finding that communications relating to the protection of an invention do not extend to an…
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EPO Refuses To Name AI as Inventor On Patent Applications
(Press Release) Last week, the Legal Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office announced its decision to dismiss the appeal in cases J 8/20 and J 9/20. The Legal Board of Appeal confirmed the decisions of the Receiving Section of the European Patent Office to refuse the applications EP 18 275 163 and EP 18 275 174, in which an artificial intelligence system called DABUS was designated as inventor in the application forms. The Legal Board of Appeal also refused the auxiliary request according to which no person had been identified as inventor but merely a natural person was indicated to have “the right to the European Patent by virtue of being the owner and creator of”…
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Bell v. L3d Distributing, 2021 FC 832, Inducement of Copyright Infringement
Inducement of copyright infringement is a novel cause of action recognized for the first time in Bell Canada v. L3d Distributing where the Federal Court awarded a group of media broadcasters over $25M in statutory damages for the streaming of unauthorized content on defendants pre-programmed set-top boxes. In cases of “whack-a-mole” patterns of infringement where an interlocutory injunction is being ignored by a defendant, like in this case the interlocutory injunction was breached over 175 times and resulted in 10 amendments of the statement of claim, inducement is rather obvious and a very welcome cause of action. It is a known pattern (modus operandi) of Canadian copyright infringers to deliberately…
