APPROPRIATION AND TRANSFORMATION
Patrick Cariou, a professional photographer, spent six years among the Rastafarians of Jamaica. and in 20oo he published a book of portrait and landscape photographs taken during this sojourn. Yes Rasta sold modestly, earning Cariou about $8,000 in royalties from sales of about 5700 copies. Four of those copies were purchased by appropriation artist Richard Prince. Prince, without…
Read MoreCEASE AND DESIST LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE – KARDASHIAN EDITION
How much might the late Robert Kardashian’s diary and personal photographs documenting the childhood exploits of Kourtney, Kimberly, and Khloé be worth? I’m no Kardashian maven, but I’m guessing a whole lot. As the girls allege in a Complaint they (together with brother Robert Jr. and mom Kris Jenner) filed in Federal Court in Los Angeles,…
Read MoreTHE BREYER ASCENDANCY
In a post a while back, I quoted from Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissents in two important copyright cases of the past decade, Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003), which upheld the copyright term extensions adopted by Congress in the Sony Bono Memorial Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, and Golan v. Holder (2012), which upheld an act…
Read MoreCOPYRIGHT AND DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES: THE RADIO-MUSIC WAR
I had the pleasure of speaking last night at a program co-sponsored by the George Washington University Law School and the D.C. Chapter of the Copyright Society of the U.S. My topic was “Copyright and Disruptive Technologies: The Radio-Music War,” and the slides can be found here.
Read MoreTHE EMPIRE STRIKES OUT
It was some ten years ago, while the Boston Red Sox were still mired in the 86-year championship drought brought on by the Curse of the Bambino, that their president Larry Lucchino hung the moniker “Evil Empire” on the New York Yankees. The Yankees, as Lucchino should have anticipated, took it as a compliment and good naturedly…
Read MoreCEASE AND DESIST LETTERS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE–CONAN DOYLE EDITION
Leslie Klinger is the author or editor of two dozen books and numerous articles on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Recently he edited a collection, called A Study in Sherlock, containing original stories based on the Holmes’ character and other elements of Conan Doyle’s originals. Although the entire Sherlock Holmes canon is in the public…
Read MoreHOLY UTILITARIAN FUNCTION, BATMAN
In a short-lived, much-reviled sitcom of my youth, My Mother the Car, the title character was a restored 1928 Porter touring car, the reincarnation of star Jerry van Dyke’s mother, who spoke to Jerry through the radio and—as per the theme song indelibly lodged in my memory—“helped him through everything I do.” I am not aware of any…
Read MoreLITTLE ORPHAN ANNOYANCES II
Back in October 2012 I posted a link to the Copyright Office’s notice seeking public comment on “the current state of play for orphan works” as part of its continuing review of the subject and “in order to advise Congress as to possible next steps for the United States.” That notice included a very fair…
Read MoreTHE INTERNET OF THE 1920s
I had the pleasure of speaking with Meridee Duddleston of WRTI-FM, Philadelphia, about the impact of radio on the music industry in the first half of the 20th Century. You can hear the interview here.
Read MoreTRADEMARK IS NOT A VERB
Have I ranted about this lately? A “trademark” is a word, symbol or other indicator of the source and quality of goods or services, i.e., a noun. Something can only serve as a trademark if it becomes associated by some segment of the public with a particular source. When it ceases to do that (perhaps by…
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