copyright

On the eve of the arrival of Superstorm Sandy, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in John Wiley and Sons v. Kirtsaeng, a case involving the international reach of the First Sale Doctrine. The impending storm provided a fittingly overwrought metaphor for the Court’s attempt to ...

Peter and the Wolf, a symphony written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936, recently received national attention through the Supreme Court decision of Golan v. Holder. Golan, decided on January 18th, 2012, upheld the constitutionality of Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”)—a provision that brought the United States ...

Factual Background When Sony released its PlayStation 3 (“PS3”) video game console, it included a feature that allowed customers to install a version of the Linux operating system so that the machine could be used as a general purpose computer. In April 2010, Sony released a system firmware update that ...

The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), under the Department of Homeland Security, engaged in another round of domain name seizures Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2011. The 18 domain name seizure, “Operation Broken Hearted,” focused on counterfeit sites for selling counterfeit luxury product brands such as Tiffany, Burberry and Channel. As ...

In the Ninth Circuit decision of Omega, S.A. v. Costco Wholesale Corp., the court ruled that the first sale doctrine does not apply to imported works manufactured abroad. Costco appealed, and oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court took place in early November. The case was based on the ...

This month, our team members have been consumed with outlines, papers, and finals, and now the holidays are upon us. Although we won’t be able to write full posts on all of the recent developments in technology law, we wanted to offer some quick updates on some of the biggest ...

Not only was the landmark peer-to-peer file-sharing trial involving Northern Minnesotan Jammie Thomas-Rasset the first of its kind to reach trial; Thomas-Rasset’s file-sharing litigation will likely come to its third trial on November 2, 2010. Thomas-Rasset downloaded 24 pop hits of the 1980s and 1990s and was found liable in 2007 for $222,000 in statutory ...

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (“ACTA”) has been under negotiation since October 2007. Over the past three years a group of nations, including the United States, have deliberated the specific contents and composition of this document designed to establish stronger intellectual property enforcement on a global scale. At the Tokyo round ...

Current copyright law has proven inadequate to address the uses of creative works in this technological and Internet age. Today’s global environment is one of almost costless reproducibility and dissemination, low-cost production of not only written works but also musical, visual, and moving image works, and increased and varied platforms ...

On Friday, the Ninth Circuit clarified its test for determining whether a software purchaser is a licensee or an owner of the purchased copy in Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc. The result affirms the ability of software publishers to restrain licensees’ ability to sell, rent, or otherwise transfer their copies, but ...