Archive for December 2012
YOGA: A COPYRIGHT MEDITATION
A Bikram Yoga studio just opened not far from my office, and almost before I could ask, “What’s Bikram Yoga?” the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, in Bikram’s Yoga College of India v. Evolation Yoga, has told me what it is and one thing it is not—copyrightable as a “choreographic work.” Details after the jump.
Read MoreAN ®-RATED SUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE
Since 1979, Marsha Fox has sold chocolate, rooster-shaped lollipops — especially popular among fans of the University of South Carolina and Jacksonville State Gamecocks — using the fully intended double entendre COCK SUCKER. In 2001 she applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to register the design shown here as a trademark. Yesterday the United States Court of…
Read MoreGRADE PECULATION
As Professors Aufderheide and Jaszi write in their book Reclaiming Fair Use (Chicago 2011), “fair use becomes real only when people use it; like a muscle, it can shrink with disuse.” Kudos then to fulltime high school teacher Rob Rang and NFLdraftscout.com, for which Rang moonlights as an NFL Draft analyst. It must have been…
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