Because aggregating headlines, first sentences of stories, and (sometimes) tiny little thumbnails of pictures constitutes an outrageous trampling on the French news service’s intellectual property, it wants at least $17.5 million in damages. (“AFP sues Google for news aggregation”, PhysOrg.com, Mar. 20). We covered the issue Nov. 9.
Posts Tagged ‘copyright’
Nastygram in Luskin’s inbox
Economics columnist and blogger Don Luskin, subject to criticism in this space and many others in 2003 when he threatened legal action against another blogger, is now himself being threatened with legal action by Worth Publishers, a company that publishes a textbook by frequent Luskin target Paul Krugman. Worth is alleging defamation and copyright violations arising from one of Luskin’s blog posts last December. Just One Minute has the details (Mar. 8).
Pro sports & intellectual property
It’s become a thriving area for lawyers, with a growing volume of litigation much of it aimed at fan activity, such as fantasy sports leagues and web-based retransmission of game broadcasts (Tresa Baldas, “Pro Sports: Technology Changes Rules of the Game”, National Law Journal, Mar. 4).
Osbourne album remix prompts class action
After bassist Bob Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake filed lawsuits demanding royalties over their performances in two Ozzy Osbourne albums, “Blizzard of Ozz” and “Diary of a Madman”, recording executives remastered the albums to strip out their performances and replace them with performances by Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin for the 2002 reissue. Now Illinois fan Anthony Wester has sued Sony Entertainment and Epic Records, saying he felt misled and cheated to learn of the substitution, and his lawyer wants class-action status for the suit. (Steve Patterson, “‘Remastered’ Osbourne albums a snow job, fan’s suit charges”, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 21; “Bassist, drummer cut from Ozzy album remixes, fan sues”, AP/AZCentral.com, Feb. 23).
Tulsa World v. bloggers
The Tulsa, Okla. newspaper has sent a cease-and-desist letter to blogger Michael D. Bates of Batesline for “inappropriately link[ing his] website to Tulsa World content” and insisted that he at once remove “unauthorized links to our content” (his posts on the subject). (It also complains about Bates’s having reprinting editorial items or portions thereof; he believes the reprinting was defensible under “fair use”). Blogger-lawyer Ronald Coleman, who recently launched the Likelihood of Confusion blog covering trademark, copyright and trade secret law, is assisting Bates and comments on the story (Feb. 18 and other entries). TechLawAdvisor also adds an observation. More on “deep linking”: Jan. 25, 2004 and links from there.
Rasheed Wallace sued
Portland, Oregon, tattooist Matthew Reed doesn’t quite want an arm and a leg in his lawsuit against Rasheed Wallace, but he’s close. Reed is upset that the large Egyptian tattoo he gave Wallace in 1998 for $450 is being used in Nike advertising, and wants an injunction and damages for alleged copyright infringement. (Ashbel S. Green, “Ink is dry on tattoo but fresh on lawsuit”, The Oregonian, Feb. 15; AP/Det. News, Feb. 16 (with photo)).
My law firm has represented Nike in other litigation.
A simple ‘Thank you’ would do
A French researcher, Guillaume Tena, found several holes in the Viguard anti-virus program that a malicious hacker could have exploited to nullify the software’s protections. What did he do? He published his findings.
The company responsible for the holy software, Tegam, sued for copyright violation. The company is asking for a 6000 euro fine and a four month jail term. A related civil case asks for 900,000 euros in damages.
The researcher’s website says he “showed how the program worked, demonstrated a few security flaws and carried out some tests with real viruses. Unlike the advertising claimed, this software didn’t detect and stop ?100 percent of viruses?.”
From the ZDNet Australia story:
According to French security Web site K-OTik, Tena had technically broken copyright laws because his exploits were “not for personal use, but were communicated to a third party”.
However, K-OTik, which regularly publishes exploit codes, claims that the ruling could create a precedent so vulnerabilities in software, however critical, could not be declared publicly without prior agreement from the software publisher.
K-OTik?s editors say the ruling is “unimaginable and unacceptable in any other field of scientific research”.
” Security researcher to be jailed for finding bugs in software?”, ZDNet Australia, Jan. 11.
“Marvel Battles Role Players”
City of Heroes, an entry in the “massively multiplayer online game” category pioneered by Sony’s Everquest, allows its nearly 200,000 participants to “bring the world of comic books alive” by inventing characters and selecting names, costumes and powers for them; the characters then interact with other players’ characters. Some users choose to imitate established comic-book heroes in creating their characters. In November, comic-book publisher Marvel Entertainment sued the site’s proprietor. According to Marvel’s complaint (PDF, courtesy Electronic Frontier Foundation), “Defendants’ Creation Engine facilitates and, indeed, encourages players to create and utilize heroes that are nearly identical in name, appearance and characteristics to characters belonging to Marvel” and the site is responsible for “directly, contributorily and vicariously infringing upon Marvel copyrights and trademarks”. Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing, a veteran of online free-speech fights, counters: “Asking City of Heroes to police their users to ensure that they don’t replicate Marvel characters is like asking a school to police its students to make sure none of them show up for Halloween in a homemade Spider-Man costume.” (Daniel Terdiman, Wired News, Nov. 16; Fred von Lohmann, “Et tu, Marvel?”, Law.com, Dec. 3 (contemplating a future offense of “pretending without a license”)).
Forbidden Broadway
The latest installment in the beloved musical spoof series sending up Broadway shows opened this month at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater in New York. As founder Gerald Alessandrini makes clear in his liner notes to vol. II, the series is made possible by the good-natured forbearance of many in the theater community: “Also special thanks to the real composers and lyricists and writers (alive and past) who have let us make mince meat out of their beautiful and well-crafted work. Without their reluctance toward lawsuits there would certainly be no Forbidden Broadway.”
The New Napster?
Major Hollywood studios, through their industry representative the Motion Picture Association of America, are suing more than 100 operators of computer servers that relay digitized movie files through on-line computer file-sharing networks, according to the Associated Press. The MPAA views the primary file-swapping services, eDonkey and BitTorrent as Napster-for-movies. The question is whether the argument will work.