Many creative people fail to register their scripts or music with the United States Copyrights Office. This causes many legal problems for the creative community. Recently, I have been researching articles for Intellectual Property infringements and came across three that were interesting. I thought I would share my thoughts on these cases.
First, in a copyright infringement action against the producers of You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, a court awarded the defendants, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., $1,000 in attorney fees after considering Robert Cabell, the plaintiffs financial circumstances (Loeb & Loeb, 2011). The district court granted Sony’s motion for summary judgment. Which is a decision made based on evidence and statements presented on record without a trial (www.lectlaw.com). Cabell alleged that the film and its marketing materials infringed his copyrights in works featuring a character named Jayms Blonde. Apparently, he did not have the supporting evidence to convince the court to take the case to trial. The court ruled that Cabell’s claims were objectively unreasonable. The original motion was a fee upwards of $568,000. However, the court considered Cabells financial situation and lowered the fee. This is an example of someone who took the risk of suing a major corporation without the proper evidence. He was lucky his financial situation was bleak because the court could have required him to pay all of the defendant’s attorney fees.
The second article that I have found interesting involves new technologies that are emerging and causing a whole lot of Intellectual Property issues. Recently, a cease-and-desist letter was sent to Ali Davar, founder and CEO of Zite, the iPad news magazine software creator (Indvik, 2011). The letter was sent from some heavy hitters in the news industry including the Associated Press, Dow Jones, and Gannett and Getty Images. Zite analyzes users everyday reading habits and pulls the information from Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader. They know what stories the reader clicked on or bypassed. They even can determine how long they’re read. This gives users an online magazine tailored to their own interests.
The concern comes from the publishers who complain that pulling the content from their sites takes away the potential for ads and other data. They are not getting any pageviews or ad impressions and this has an adverse effect on their businesses. Davar has cooperated with the publishers and agreed to render their content as a webpage. It will be interesting to see if Zite begins a strategy with these publishers in the future. It seems to me that they could negotiate a deal where both Zite and the Publishers could benefit.
Finally, the last article deals with writers stealing content from online blogs to incorporate in television episodes. Apparently, CBS and their CSI:NY series created a show based on Teddy Wayne’s creative blog (www.motherboard.tv). Unfortunately, Wayne did not understand his freelance contract with Radar, the gossip magazine, and unknowingly handed over his rights to them. Therefore, he is unable to seek action because he is not the owner of the copyright. A CBS attorney implicitly acknowledged that the series used his blog to develop the show. This brings us to the importance of understanding anything that you post on the Internet. If you post your content on Facebook, you have just given them the right to do practically whatever they feel like doing with your photos, updates, and profile data (Pasternack, 2011). As creative people, we need to always make sure your creative content is protected. You can find more information on how to register your work with the United States Copyright Office at www.copyright.gov.
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