Posts Tagged: "copyright law"

To the Batmobile! Copyright Saves the Day in Gotham City

Mark Towle owns Gotham Garage, which manufactures and sells replicas of automobiles featured in famous motion pictures and television programs. Gotham Garage specifically sold fully constructed cars as well as kits which allow customers to modify their car to look like the Batmobile, and advertised its replicas as “Batmobiles” while marketing its business via the domain name batmobilereplicas.com. In May 2011, DC Comics filed suit against Towle for copyright infringement, trademark infringement and unfair competition arising out of Towle’s marketing and sale of Batmobile replicas. Towle countered that the Batmobile – at least as it appeared in the famous 1966 television series and the 1989 motion picture, the main inspirations for Gotham Garage’s designs – was not subject to copyright protection.

Dancing Baby Center of Test Case Over Bad DMCA Takedown Requests

In February 2007, Stephanie Lenz uploaded a 29-second video of her son dancing in her kitchen to the Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy” to YouTube. Universal Music Group, Prince’s publishing administrator responsible for enforcing his copyrights, objected to the otherwise-innocuous video, and sent YouTube a warning to remove the video, claiming that it constituted copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Stephanie Lenz sued, arguing that Universal’s takedown request targeted permissible fair use, which generally permits the use of copyrighted material in limited conditions, such as when used in connection with criticism, parody, commentary or news reporting.

Brains, Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Derivative Works and the Walking Dead Licensing Controversy

Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont (The Green Mile; The Shawshank Redemption) brought the The Walking Dead TV show to life. He wrote, directed, and produced the pilot episode, and served as the showrunner and executive producer (often-synonymous positions) for its smash-hit first season. It was surprising then, when AMC suddenly fired Darabont while Season 2 was in production, and after sending him to promote the series at Comic-Con. Darabont sued in New York State Court in December of 2013, and recently amended his complaint to include the lack of accreditation and profits allegedly owed him from AMC’s “companion series,” Fear the Walking Dead.

Google Prevails in “Innocence of Muslims” Copyright Appeal

Judge McKeown rejects Garcia’s copyright claim, explaining, “Innocence of Muslims is an audiovisual work that is categorized as a motion picture and is derivative of the script. Garcia is the author of none of this and makes no copyright claim to the film of the script. Instead, Garcia claims that her five-second performance itself merits copyright protection.” During litigation, the Copyright Office found Garcia’s performance was not eligible for copyright.

Jury Tells Robin Thicke to Give it Up

Thicke maintains that the Gaye family doesn’t own a genre, a style, or a groove and he’s right. The Gayes point out no other musicians or songs of the era were compared with “Blurred Lines,” and they’re right, too. A viable criticism of the verdict is that it could have a chilling effect on new music for fear of overzealous copyright owners attempting to expand this concept to their cases. Is it possible that a ruling of this nature would stifle creativity? Perhaps, but people were saying the same thing when the music sampling cases happened, and the industry adapted just fine.