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Yes, this video is actually being litigated on copyright infringement grounds. Summary from Electronic Frontier Foundation,
South Park aired the “What What” parody in a 2008 episode critiquing the popularity of absurd online videos. Two years later, copyright owner Brownmark Films sued Viacom and Comedy Central, accusing South Park of infringement. A federal judge dismissed the case, calling it a clear fair use. Brownmark appealed to the 7th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals, claiming that fair use cannot be decided on a motion to dismiss, no matter how obvious. In an amicus brief filed Monday, EFF argued that Brownmark is asking for a standard that would chill free speech and encourage frivolous litigation.
Amicus brief below:
Facebook ‘Friend Poaching’
When was the last time you sent a friend request on Facebook? When was the last time you got sued for it? Complexions v Complexions Day Spa & Facebook, is, according to Santa Clara Internet Law professor Eric Goldman, the first case to involve Facebook ‘friend poaching‘.
The case is currently in front of the New York Northern District Court, and involves two spas doing business under similar trade names, and Facebook. The plaintiff spa notified Facebook of a trademark infringement, which prompted Facebook to remove the page. For this action, the plaintiff is seeking damages in lost sales and marketing potential.
The plaintiff is further claiming that the defendant spa knowingly ‘friended’ it’s customers to the defendant spa’s own Facebook page, creating an unfair advantage for the defendant spa. For this, the plaintiff is seeking injunctive relief and monetary damages.
The case is yet to be decided, and according to Goldman, it’s likely to be the first of many such cases. Among the keen to see how this case unfolds is American University blogger, Dana Nicoletti, who notes that “it will be extremely interesting to see how the Northern District of New York treats these contentions, and how other businesses react to a decision.” Whatever the decision, businesses will have to think twice the next time they so much as log onto Facebook.
Access Copyright: Outrageous and Unnecessary
As a UWO student (and at many other Canadian universities,) you automatically pay an annual fee to an organization called Access Copyright. An item is included in your student activity fee, and it used to be $3.38 per student per year, plus an amount based on the number of photocopies made at library photocopy machines. However, when the licence agreement expired last year, Access Copyright did not seek to renegotiate with UWO. Instead, it applied to the Copyright Board for a massive restructuring of the agreement. If the Board approves the request, Access Copyright would receive $45 per student per year. With 30,000 full-time students, this amounts to $1.35 million annually. But that’s not all. Access Copyright would also have the right to surveillance: Section 14 (4) of the proposed licence agreement states that:
The Educational Institution shall give Access Copyright, on reasonable notice, right of access through-out the Educational Institution’s premises in order to organize and carry out an audit, including full access to the Secure Network and all Course Collections.
This would include access to university email accounts.
There are a number of problems with the Access Copyright regime. First of all, every university student is presumed to be infringing copyright and this seems very unlikely given the Fair Dealing rights in the Canadian Copyright Act that expressly permit the copying of non-substantial portions of a work for the purpose of private study. As well, the university is presumed to be responsible for the presumed copyright infringement by students. This is contrary to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in CCH Canadian Limited v. Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004] 1 S.C.R. 339.CCD, which held that a library is NOT responsible for copyright infringement merely by providing access to photocopiers.
What is more troubling, though, is that by paying Access Copyright, our fair dealing rights become meaningless.
Online Retailer Amazon Scores Victory in Canadian Patent Case
What had become a court case that took over ten years to resolve ended Oct 14 with the online giant Amazon.com emerging victorious. In 1998, Amazon filed to patent its one-click shopping method, which enables users to shop online quickly and efficiently by saving customers’ personal information such that they don’t have to re-enter it in subsequent purchases.
While the online retailer successfully patented one-click shopping in the United States, it encountered opposition in Canada. Canada’s Commissioner of Patents denied the patent application on the grounds that a business method could not be patented under Canadian law.
Amazon subsequently appealed the commissioner’s decision in a federal court. According to a recent Law.com article, Justice Michael Phelan ruled that business methods could indeed be considered patentable material under certain circumstances. The commissioner justified her initial decision to deny the patent application by invoking the patent guideline that requires the invention or technology to be “the change of character or condition in a physical object.” Phelan noted that the commissioner had inordinately emphasized the “physical” component in her decision to deny the application, arguing that what makes an invention patent-eligible above al is its innovative practical applications and commercial usefulness.
Phelan moreover castigated the commissioner for deferring to U.K and European patent law, which, he asserted is based on exclusions whereas Canadian, Australian, and American patent law primarily hinges its patent regulations on the definition of invention.
While it is as yet unclear how Phelan’s decision might affect innovation and litigation in Canada in the future, it is possible and expected that the commissioner will file to appeal the decision. A Toronto Sun article reported on the story, quoting University of Ottawa law professor Michael Gist, who stated, “There are those that want to see that happen, who argue it can be helpful from an innovation perspective. There are many others who disagree. What they see is abuses of the patent system in the U.S.”
Judge Phelan’s full decision on the case can be found here in PDF format.
By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Olivia Coleman, who writes on the topics of online colleges and universities. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: olivia.coleman33 @gmail.com.
Prisoner’s copyright
Inmate rights are a lost cause for an average politician. If anything, legislators are more likely to push for harsher sentences, more hurdles to parole, and less money for rehabilitation. Of course, history knows prisoners who survived jail through spirituality or by creating works of arts. But one Canadian court case shows that the state may deprive prisoners even of their rights to intellectual property created in the slammer.
John Hawley was sentenced to ten years in prison for armed robberies committed in his mid-twenties. After he was released on parole, John started a “successful commercial art and design studio in Toronto” (Hawley v. Canada, [1990] F.C.J. No. 337). When he served a part of his sentence in Frontenac Institution, a minimum security prison, he created a large painting entitled “Mount Whymper.” This work of art became the subject of a lawsuit he brought against the federal government claiming copyright in “Mount Whymper.”
The Federal Court denied his claim. It found that John was an employee of the Crown at all material times. The judge looked at some of the traditional factors showing supervision and control of John’s work by the prison authorities. He found that John had a work supervisor and that he painted as part of his prison employment. Section 13(3) of the Copyright Act is unambiguous in denying an otherwise strong protection of the creator in cases of works produced in the course of employment. The employer is the IP owner, period.
But was John really a federal employee? According to the court, if you’re in prison, you are, at least for the purposes of IP ownership. It ultimately doesn’t matter that your employment is forced and that your spare time is artificially limited and controlled. To quote the judge: “Frontenac Institution policies, as found in similar institutions, provide only circumscribed conditions under which an inmate can profit or gain from his own labours exerted during leisure hours.” It looks like the flip side of prison rehabilitation is coerced federal employment and consequent government ownership of any works of art created by the inmate.
Oscar Wilde wrote De Profundis in gaol. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn composed poems in the Gulag. If they did it in Canadian correctional institutions, would our federal government claim copyright in their works too?
(Post sponsored by AdviceScene)
Call for Participation: Cyber-Surveillance in Everyday Life: An international workshop
Call for Participation
Cyber-Surveillance in Everyday Life: An international workshop
May 12-15, 2011, University of Toronto, Canada
Digitally mediated surveillance (DMS) is an increasingly prevalent, but still largely invisible, aspect of daily life. As we work, play and negotiate public and private spaces, on-line and off, we produce a growing stream of personal digital data of interest to unseen others. CCTV cameras hosted by private and public actors survey and record our movements in public space, as well as in the workplace. Corporate interests track our behaviour as we navigate both social and transactional cyberspaces, data mining our digital doubles and packaging users as commodities for sale to the highest bidder. Governments continue to collect personal information on-line with unclear guidelines for retention and use, while law enforcement increasingly use internet technology to monitor not only criminals but activists and political dissidents as well, with worrisome implications for democracy.
This international workshop brings together researchers, advocates, activists and artists working on the many aspects of cyber-surveillance, particularly as it pervades and mediates social life. This workshop will appeal to those interested in the surveillance aspects of topics such as the following, especially as they raise broader themes and issues that characterize the cyber-surveillance terrain more widely:
- social networking (practices & platforms)
- search engines
- behavioural advertising/targeted marketing
- monitoring and analysis techniques (facial recognition, RFID, video analytics, data mining)
- Internet surveillance (deep packet inspection, backbone intercepts)
- resistance (actors, practices, technologies)
A central concern is to better understand DMS practices, making them more publicly visible and democratically accountable. To do so, we must comprehend what constitutes DMS, delineating parameters for research and analysis. We must further explore the way citizens and consumers experience, engage with and respond to digitally mediated surveillance. Finally, we must develop alliances, responses and counterstrategies to deal with the ongoing creep of digitally mediated surveillance in everyday life. Read more
Implications of Social Media in IP Law
Recent presentation by Blaine Bettinger of Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC
The stakes of copyright reform
Not many government bills cause so much debate as C-32—the legislation to amend Canada’s Copyright Act—introduced on June 2, 2010. One of C-32’s most contentious innovations is a complete ban on bypassing digital locks on electronic content. James Moore, a federal Minister, said that C-32 offered “a common-sense balance between the interests of consumers and the rights of the creative community.” But his opponents believe Moore’s “common sense” will empower copyright holders and take away traditional rights of consumers.
C-32 is not the first attempt to revise Canada’s Copyright Act. The most recent reform effort began during the previous federal government in 2005. C-32 predecessors, Bills C-60 and C-61, died as a result of a collapsed government and a dissolved parliament. Many opposed the reforms, and Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor, became an intellectual leader of the protest movement.
The government has said the current law is outdated. One letter sent to constituents mentioned that “Canada has been placed on piracy watch lists and our intellectual property protections are compared with those of countries like China, Russia and Dubai.” The government justified the reform by the need to comply with international treaties that it signed on behalf of Canada. There are also allegations that the Canadian government acted under pressure from the US government and the copyright lobby.
This reform will decide issues that ultimately concern everyone. Copyright is an exclusive right to copy or distribute a work. The flip side of someone’s copyright is everyone’s duty to respect it by not copying or distributing the copyright holder’s work without permission. Pretty much any original product of human expression is a work protected by copyright, including movies, music, books, and even your emails.
Copyright’s prohibition on copying would be draconian if some exceptions didn’t exist. Traditionally, “fair dealing” is one. The law has entitled us to copy parts of someone’s work for criticism, review, study, or similar activities. Just like copyright is a right of content owners against content consumers, fair dealing is a right of consumers against owners. Quoting from books, showing films clips, playing song excerpts, photocopying a few pages from a journal are essential to the development of arts and science and to our self-reflection as a society. If we can’t copy anything, we can’t spread information, and curbing the flow of information with constant payments to copyright holders will curb ideas and free expression. Fair dealing is important, and it is our right.
Copyright owners’ or their partners use technological protection measures (TPMs) to limit our right to fair dealing. They can encrypt their content so we can’t copy it. Most DVD films are an example. Owners can use proprietary formats that only sanctioned technology can access. Amazon does it with its e-books, which only Amazon Kindle can open. Hardware makers can restrict their devices to accept only permitted content. Apple screens each and every iPhone application before allowing it into its App Store.
You would expect the law to protect our traditional rights to fair dealing in those cases. And in some countries, to take the example of mobile phone locks, the law regulates or prohibits this practice. But in most countries, including Canada, the law doesn’t stop copyright owners or their partners from locking content or devices up. Such locks would make the right to fair dealing meaningless if circumvention technologies didn’t exist. They allow consumers to bypass digital locks on electronic content.
The big deal about C-32 is that it bans circumvention under penalty of fines or jail. Not only does C-32 ignore TMPs’ gutting of fair dealing rights, but it also punishes those using circumvention for fair dealing. C-32 turns consumers’ fair dealing rights into privileges granted at copyright owners’ discretion. If owners choose to unlock their content, fair dealing is possible. If they use TPMs, it’s not. If C-32 is passed, the independent statutory right to fair dealing will cease to exist.
Some people use circumvention to make illegal copies of movies, music, software, etc. But to choke a long-established right because the entertainment industry loses profits is an overkill. Go after illegal distributors, strengthen enforcement of existing laws but don’t give the copyright lobby powers to regulate fair dealing. Do we as a society want to give so much control over information flow, and by extension essentially over thought and expression, to an industry group?
(Post sponsored by AdviceScene)
Copyright reform in Canada: Op-Ed
Industry Minister Tony Clement knows only one way to write copyright laws for the country: heavyhandedly … Read the entire June 11th commentary at the Vancouver Sun
The problem with electronic books
I love my Kindle. I love this thin, light tablet that I can read both at the desk and in bed. I love the ease of getting new books, and I love when the fresh issue of The New Yorker downloads itself. I have read more books in the last year because of the Kindle, but I also paid more for books that I otherwise would have borrowed from the library. On the balance, I think ebooks are great and the way of the future, but we must watch out for some problems with those ebooks that use closed, proprietary formats.
Regardless of format, ebooks have some compelling advantages over traditional printed books. First, ebooks can last infinitely. With printed books, it is entirely conceivable that a rare, out-of-print edition will simply disappear because its physical form is weak and vulnerable to wear and destruction. Ebooks are easy to back up. The cost of making each additional copy is practically zero. Ebooks after all are computer files like Word documents or JPEG images. That’s why ebooks are also enormously portable. A thousand-volume paper-based library is to a thousand ebooks as an elephant is to a pet lizard. The publishing costs are also much lower for new books because authors create them in an electronic form, and there is no need to typeset them or to buy thousands of pounds of paper to print them. There is also no need for expensive brick-and-mortar stores with a large sales staff. Ebooks are sold or given away for free online. This is especially handy if a single corporation dominates your country’s printed book market. In fact, anyone can publish an ebook online potentially reaching millions at a relatively miniscule cost. Finally, think of all the trees ebooks save.
But there are serious problems with ebooks, mostly when they come in closed, proprietary formats. A closed format means that its owner (e.g. a book distributor like Amazon) controls what you can do with the book. The proprietary format owner can hide the details of how the format works making it more difficult to build alternative ebook readers. For example, opening Word documents with non-Microsoft software is not as perfect as opening them with Microsoft Word. But most text editors are equally good at manipulating plain text or HTML files, which are open formats. The ebook format owner can enforce its control with the law (e.g. patents) or technology (e.g. encryption). In some jurisdictions, it is also unlawful to circumvent encryption of proprietary-format media. Amazon protects many of the books it sells with such technology also known as Digital Rights Management (DRM).
Because many ebooks have closed formats, publishers appear to license books to readers rather than sell them. It’s easier to control use of a licensed electronic product than of printed, physical books. We can’t easily share proprietary-format, protected ebooks. You can’t just email an ebook you bought from Amazon to your friend. Amazon locks each protected book to the Kindle of the person who bought it. Your friend can’t read your ebook on his or her Kindle. It’s also harder to overcome regional restrictions. Before, if a publisher sold a book only in the US, you could still bring it to Canada. Now, publishers can make it harder through DRM. Publishers can also use DRM to control libraries or to exclude them from certain books completely assuming some books are available only in electronic format. You can’t easily photocopy a page from an ebook if it’s in a closed format. Of course, if it uses an open format and it’s not DRM-protected, you can copy any text from the book anywhere and any number of times taking full advantage of its electronic nature. In some cases, if the book is in a proprietary format, the publisher or distributor can even delete your book remotely. The closed format and the need to protect digital content also strips most buyers of their anonymity. You cannot buy a book online anonymously. Usually, the book distributor has a record of every book you purchase. This could chill freedom of thought in a future where all ebooks are in a closed format because people would hesitate to buy books seen as dangerous to their reputation.
Finally, closed formats live only as long as their corporate owners. As I was enjoying The Black Swan on my Kindle last night, I wondered what would happen to my copy if Amazon were to go under. The reading device would eventually break down, and its battery would stop functioning even sooner. I would still be able to read the book with Kindle software on my Mac, but if Amazon disappeared, its software would eventually stop working on future computers. At the end, I would be left with a useless file that no one can read. It’s not a huge loss for a $10 book, but what if I invested $10,000 in proprietary-format ebooks? What if some books are available only electronically and only through a single distributor in the future? Is it so far-fetched? Or is it far-fetched that a large bookseller could vanish one day? With closed, proprietary ebook formats, we could end up with a single point of failure in not so distant future endangering our investment in books and our literary heritage.
(Post sponsored by AdviceScene)
Brand Management Law
First posted on Commercial Law International on April 26, 2010.
So what is brand management law?
The best definition that I can give is the law or legal practice that facilitates a company or companies managing their band or brands. Yes, I know, I know the definition is a bit circular but hey what do you expect, I am a lawyer after all.
Then what is brand management?
Brand management according to BusinessDictionary.com is: the process of maintaining, improving, and upholding a brand so that the name is associated with positive results…Brand management is built on a marketing foundation, but focuses directly on the brand and how that brand can remain favorable to customers.
Brand management law (BML) is thus defined as the legal facilitation of the above process. It is a multi-disciplinary practice area and brings together many differing areas of law (Intellectual property (IP), litigation, contracts, tax, etc) but more importantly by its very nature also encompasses the non-legal (marketing, public relations, consumer care, business sensibility/sensitivity, etc).
BML is not just a simple matter of commercial awareness or knowing your clients business – both of which are important very important aspects of this area of law, however BML goes beyond either of them. That is to say it is not just a matter of discerning what the client’s interests are, then moving to put in place the requisite legal instruments that establish some right “to” or “in” and then defending said right or rights. Take for example a client that has expended millions on research and development, this client clearly has an interest in seeing a return on this expenditure, a lawyer would move to protect the client’s work product by intellectual propertizing it as much as possible (e.g. registering patents and trademarks), the lawyer would then act as a kind of sentinel, safeguarding the client’s IP through the threat (real or potential) of legal action.
BML is this but much more. Its is practice area that requires a lawyer to be able to keep the legal and non-legal in sync – always remembering that it is the brand that matters.
This practice area requires from a lawyer certain degree of intellectual flexibility. From the nature of our profession lawyers are problem solvers – some might beg to differ – to be more specific we are legal problem solvers. To put it succinctly we will find the legal solution to your business problem. And here lays the problem for many a lawyer when it comes to BML.
Lawyers are good at finding legal solutions to business problems; well that’s what we were trained to do after all. However, BML requires a lawyer to go beyond this and to realize that some times what is in fact needed is a business solution to a legal problem.
What is the difference between these two approaches, isn’t it just matter of semantics? Well, you will just have to stay tuned.
George Lucas Doesn’t Like Legal Bloggers…
Ewok! At times I feel like legal blogging is like Mark Hamill’s career. It will lead to Broadway and cartoon voiceovers rather than Bay Street or serious advocacy.
I look after my brother who is a big Star Wars fan. I’ve been to two Star Wars conventions because of him. So when Star Wars Celebration V (“SWCV”) was announced for Orlando, August 12 – 15, 2010, I thought it may be an opportunity to do some legal blogging among one of popular culture’s leading franchises. My brother had already booked the room and I had enough airmiles to make the trip cost effective.
When SWCV’s official web page was launched, I immediately applied for media credentials. As a law student and a legal blogger, the idea of writing stories of importance to the legal profession from the Star Wars universe was literally out of this world for me.
I pitched my involvement in terms of the great depository of legal material available at the convention. Issues of intellectual property, copyright, trademarks, contract, and entertainment law have obvious importance. The geek in me asked, “Could Luke sue in tort for having his hand sliced off by his father?” Or for that matter, “Could Anakin have a claim as well when he lost his right arm years before during a duel with Count Dooku?” Then there was the ever complicated contractual issue involving the clone armies produced by the Kaminoans for the Jedi Council, commissioned by a Jedi long since dead.
I waited for the three week turnaround for approval but nothing. I email the contact at Reed Exhibitions, the company running the convention, and who I must say was always prompt and professional. Eventually I was notified that my request for media credentials was declined. Being a bit of a tie-fighter, I appealed. Lucasfilm’s press department through Reed Exhibitions made it known that www.lawiscool.com did not match “the criteria that they’re looking for to provide a media badge to the event”.
What? I was at Indianapolis and Los Angeles in 2005 and 2007. My bar tabs nearly killed me. What did George Lucas have against law students or lawyers for that matter? Then the asteroid in the room hit me.
Reed Exhibitions is owned by Reed Elsevier who also owns Lexis Nexis, its legal publishing wing. The quicklaw of conspiracies entered into my mind. None of the six motion picture Star Wars films, nor the Clone Wars animation series, and not even the cult favourite Star Wars the Christmas Special featured lawyers. Sure they have bounty hunters, the Sand People, and Hutt mobsters but alas none from the learned profession.
George doesn’t like lawyers. The darth of examples are abundantly clear. It is like lawyers were the Jar Jar Brinks of the money-interested professions, trying to blow up the Star Wars world through the death star of blogging.
By experience, I understand that the Star Wars Celebration gatherings are a wretched hive of scum and villainy but then I went to law school. By Princess Leia’s slave costume, in Indianapolis I even had coffee at Starbucks across the street from the event with Barrie Holland, the English actor who played the Imperial Officer who quipped to Han Solo, “You Rebel Scum” in The Empire Strikes Back. A nice chap, we both were taking a time out from Star Wars fandom.
I’m sorry to droid on like this but I feel like a rebel challenging the dreaded empire. What does the Lucas brand have to lose by giving a legal blogger a media pass? I might increase the interest level in an active and professional market while addressing legal issues affecting more than just the Star Wars universe? I will never force the issue but I do look forward to a new hope.
The Author at Celebration IV in Los Angeles, 2007
