Ghost Rider vs. Free Riders?
News from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals: The man who might have created the Marvel Comics superhero/anti-hero Ghost Rider… well, might in fact have […]
Continue reading »Author: Matthew David Brozik
No safe harbor for this shark.
Generally, one doesn’t expect to find copyright decisions of note in state courts, but every so often one will crop up. One really doesn’t expect […]
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Fight for your right to parody. Or don’t.
Sometimes, just when a copyright dispute is getting very interesting, the parties go and do the unthinkable: They resolve their differences like reasonable people, and […]
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ReDigi Redux: A Decision in Two Dialogues
There is a case so plainly inappropriate for a fair use defense, and this is that case.
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Inside s©oop.
The other day, I received an email from a Registration Specialist, Literary Division at the U.S. Copyright Office. She’d written to ask me to submit […]
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Digital Analogy: Behind the Scenes of Aereo
“Judge Roberts, I remember Sputnik. I knew Sputnik. Sputnik was a friend of mine. Judge Roberts, the respondent’s system is no Sputnik.”
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Where Were You When “Happy Birthday to You” Was Found to Be in the Public Domain?
Newly discovered evidence [according to a court filing] “proves conclusively that Happy Birthday has been in the public domain since no later than 1922.” At […]
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Verb That Adjective Noun! “Google” Is Not (Yet) Generic.
It was bound to happen sooner or later—and in fact it happened back in 2012. Someone sued to have “Google” declared generic and the registration […]
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The Art of the Decision on the Opinions of Science.
In a wholly unsexy but nonetheless instructive decision in ONY, Inc. v. Cornerstone Therapeutics, Inc. dated June 26, 2013, the Second Circuit upheld the dismissal of a […]
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Own (Up to) Your (Alleged) Infringement
The problem—as this blogger sees it—with most mass-media reports of court decisions is that they tell you the outcome, but they rarely if ever tell […]
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Norman Blagman Versus the Whole Digital Music Industry: Round 1 to Blagman.
I can’t write a better introductory sentence than Judge Andrew Carter of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York did […]
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Who Owns First?
Is the beloved routine in the public domain? Say it with me: “I don’t know. Third base.”
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Covering your assets.
Over the weekend, all the nerdiest news outlets reported that Volpin Props—a company that makes props and replicas “mostly videogame related,” according to the outfit’s […]
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What the –? (ABC v. DEF.)
Here’s what we knew, and when we knew it: On March 19, 2013, a federal lawsuit was commenced in the United States District Court for […]
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