A dispute concerning the screenplay for the 2016 Hollywood biographical comedy “Florence Foster Jenkins” (FFJ) – a film about a tone-deaf New York socialite who labours under the delusion that she is a talented opera singer – has this month produced a Court of Appeal decision centering on the parties’ own adjustment to reality. Apart from highlighting a perhaps lesser-considered pitfall of working with your other half, the judgment emphasises the practical difficulties of applying the test of joint authorship in English copyright law.
The matter first arrived at the UK’s Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) in 2017, when screenwriter Nicholas Martin brought a claim against opera singer/children’s author Julia Kogan. Mr Martin and Ms Kogan had begun a romantic relationship in 2011, and lived together until the breakdown of their relationship in 2014. During that period, early drafts of the FFJ screenplay came into being. Whilst it was accepted that Ms Kogan had introduced Mr Martin to the real-life story of FFJ, little else about the creation of the script was agreed. Continue Reading
The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous copyright decision in March 2019 with implications for anyone involved in a copyright dispute, as well as for marketers and brands that create and use copyrighted materials. In Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporationv. Wall Street.com, LLC (Fourth Estate), the Court resolved a long-standing split among the circuits over the requirement to obtain a copyright registration before filing a lawsuit.
Tattoos, 
Sports and sports teams have a long history with intellectual property law and, more specifically, trademarks. Sports teams, colleges, and universities have long trademarked their names and logos, and have routinely and aggressively enforced those rights. In 1988 Pat Riley, then the head coach of the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Lakers, applied for a trademark on the term “three-peat” for shirts, jackets, and hats (U.S Reg. No. 1,552,980). Subsequently, others have attempted to trademark various terms, such as baseball player Manny Ramierz trademarking the phrase ‘Manny Being Manny’. In 2012, football player Robert Griffin III filed for seven trademarks: RGIII, RG3, Robert Griffin III, Unbelievably Believable, Go Catch Your Dream, Light You Up, Work Hard Stay Humble, No Pressure No Diamonds, and Dream Big Live Bigger.
Suppose that you have an invention disclosure for a design of an article that you want to protect? When you review the invention disclosure, you notice that the design is ornamental, for example a pattern, on an article such as a chair. You draft and file a design patent application on the pattern described as applied to a chair, but you do not include any drawings showing the pattern applied to the chair. Subsequently, you obtain the design patent and later find out that a third party is making baskets including the pattern. Can you enforce your design patent against the alleged infringer? The answer is NO because your design patent is limited in scope to a chair.
A federal district court in California has awarded a $2.7-million default judgment to Kim Kardashian West in her lawsuit against a fast fashion online retailer that allegedly used her persona and likeness to sell its clothing, in part by repeatedly tagging her on Instagram and linking to the retailer’s e-commerce site.
An indefinite patent description will pass muster when pigs fly. In HIP, Inc. v. Hormel Foods Corporation et al., C.A. 18-615-CFC (D. Del. June 24, 2019), the United States District Court for the District of Delaware held that a patent failed to meet the requirement of 35 U.S.C. § 112 that a patent’s description must not be indefinite. As a result, the Court held that U.S. Patent Number 9,510,610 (the “#610 patent”) was invalid. 
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the fashion and beauty industries — and the marketing of the same — has steadily gained traction over the last few years and it’s not hard to see why. AI provides a myriad of opportunities and potential applications within the fields of fashion and beauty, but it can also be a double-edged sword presenting several potential legal issues. 
In the framework of its efforts against online copyright piracy, the Hellenic Copyright Organization (“HCO”, Greek Acronym “OPI”) launched, on August 1st 2019, a new web portal, under the domain name “theLegalBay.gr”. The new website aims to be the place where online users can easily find web platforms available either solely in Greece or worldwide (including in Greece), which provide copyright protected content legally.
Last month the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division announced a landmark new policy to incentivize companies to develop robust antitrust compliance programs. For the first time, the Antitrust Division will now consider a company’s antitrust compliance program as a factor in evaluating whether or not to bring criminal charges against the company and its officers.