The 2010 Hindi film “Knock Out,”was about a businessman being held hostage in a telephone booth be a sniper. If that sounds similar to the 2003 American thriller “Phone Booth,” you are not alone. As India’s New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV) reported, “Bollywood is known for brazenly borrowing ‘inspiration’ from Western films,” but the country’s
Shortly after its release in 2009 Mobigame’s Edge had to be removed from the US and UK Apple Store because of a trademark claim by Tim Langdell, founder of Edge Games, Inc. Multiple outlets have referred to Langdell as a “trademark troll” because of his recurring tendency to sue any game maker who used the term “edge”
Viacom has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google’s YouTube service for using unauthorized clips of television shows like “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report” and “South Park.” The $1 billion lawsuit was first filed in 2007 and a judge sided with YouTube in 2010, although a federal appeals court abandoned the original ruling. On
Country music superstar Garth Brooks has filed a lawsuit that alleges fraud and breach of contract. The Tulsa World reported that Brooks’ former business partner, Lisa Sanderson, claims that “The Red Strokes,” a song from Brooks’ hit 1993 album “In Pieces,” was based on a poem that she wrote. Brooks later founded Red Strokes Entertainment Inc.
The US Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante appeared before the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Committee on the Judiciary last month. In her prepared remarks, the director of the US Copyright Office said that a major portion of the current copyright statute was enacted in 1976 but it
A verdict from a federal jury that found networking equipment corporation Cisco Systems, Inc. fraudulently obtained technology developed by patent licenser XpertUniverse Inc.’s and violated two of the New York-based company’s patents. The jury ordered Cisco to pay $70 million in civil fraud damages and an additional $34,000 in damages for the patent infringement claims.
In Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the Justices will decide whether human genes can be given a patent. “The court’s ruling will shape the course of scientific research and medical testing, and it may alter the willingness of businesses to invest in the expensive work of isolating and understanding genetic material,” the New York Times
We noted in a blog post last week that the recent US Supreme Court decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. held that the first sale doctrine—a section of copyright law that allows an individual who purchases a copy of a copyrighted work the right to sell that particular copy—applies regardless of where the copy
Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. is in good shape in the patent infringement lawsuit it filed against Microsoft Corp. Last April, US International Trade Commission Judge David Shaw ruled that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console violated four of Motorola’s patents and later recommended a ban on the sale of the Xbox console in the United States. However,
While he was working for the the Republican Study Committee (RSC) in November 2012, Derek Khanna authored a policy brief entitled “Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it” that concluded with a call for reform. The Washington Post reported that reaction to the memo was enthusiastic, and Khanna said the American
