SPLISH-SPLASH, REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
It has been almost 25 years since Laramie, a small Philadelphia-based purveyor of “rack” (read “knockoff”) toys switched roles and scored an enormous hit with its TV-advertised, patented, and SUPER SOAKER® branded line of air pressure water guns. As Laramie’s chief intellectual property enforcer at the time, I remember well several frenetic years of legal…
Read MoreHAPPY BIRTHDAY ASCAP
The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) is 100 years old today. I have a guest post on ASCAP’s profound influence on the course of American popular music over at the Oxford University Press blog.
Read MoreCONAN DOYLE ESTATE LOSES ROUND 1
Early this year, we reported on the filing of Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate in the federal district court in Chicago. Leslie Klinger is the editor of a collection, called A Study in Sherlock, containing original stories based on the Sherlock Holmes character and other elements of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories. He has prepared a sequel entitled In the…
Read MoreGOOGLE BOOK SEARCH FAIR USE, JUDGE CHIN HOLDS
We have been following the ups and downs of The Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc., the long-running copyright dispute over Google’s plan to digitize all the world’s libraries, since the inception of this blog. After the parties’ grand bargain, which had the potential to create a unique on-line repository of virtually all the world’s…
Read MoreCEASE AND DESIST LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE – CIVIL RIGHTS HEROS EDITION
With the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act fast upon us, the market for papers, ephemera, and memorabilia of the civil rights movement seems to heating up, bringing with it a wave of legal activity by the heirs, assigns, and executors of some of its most iconic figures, what we cheekily call “cease and desist…
Read MoreAPPROPRIATION AND TRANSFORMATION II
In a post here back in April, we reported on the Second Circuit’s ruling in a fascinating fair use case involving the use of copyrighted photographs by appropriation artist Richard Prince, Cariou v. Prince. We observed that in assessing the “purpose and character” of Prince’s use the court had taken an exceptionally broad and subjective approach to…
Read MoreCEASE AND DESIST LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE – ROGER RICHMAN EDITION
Cease and Desist Letters from Beyond the Grave is an occasional, and judging by the visitor statistics, popular feature of this blog, second only to the Book Reports in traffic. Each installment of the series has been devoted to some notable example of the overreach by the heirs and estates of literary and show business luminaries, such as…
Read MoreDINNER AT LUCHOW'S
On a rain-soaked night in October 1913, an Irishman, a Scotsman, and a Romanian-born Jew walked into Lüchow’s Restaurant, the German sausage and schnitzel emporium on Manhattan’s East 14th Street. The punch line? The dinner those three European émigrés shared on that night 100 years ago set in motion a chain of events that has…
Read MoreY-M-C-A: NO DANCING IN THE END ZONE YET, OFFICER
In one of the very first posts on this blog last year, we reported on Victor Willis’s “early victory” in his quest to recover valuable copyrights on songs he co-wrote for the Village People back in the 1970s. (Willis, pictured here, was also their lead singer, dressed back in the day as the “cop.”) Willis was one of…
Read MoreENGLISH LANGUAGE 1, SUBWAY 0
No, this is not another contribution to the on-going debate over whether Subway’s vaunted “footlong” sandwiches actually measure 12 full inches. I will leave that to the consumer affairs bloggers. Our concern is with Subway’s effort to monopolize the word “footlong” as a registered trademark for 12-inch, give or take, heros/submarines/wedges/hoagies/grinders. Last week the Trademark Trial…
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