Menu

Saturday 29 October 2016

Affectionate Nickname Banned In Barry Island?

Barry Island, Wales, is probably best known for being the home of the female lead in TV's Gavin and Stacey. It's also a resort town with many attractions, including a colourful ferris wheel that the locals like to call the Barry Eye. I mean, it's not as if it could possibly be confused with the London attraction of the same name, right?

Friday 28 October 2016

Ancillary Copyright Measure Might Infringe On Social Media

The ancillary copyright juggernaut trundles on despite the debacle that ensued when Google packed up and left Spain over it. While the hotly-disputed link tax element has gone, the insistence on charging for headlines and snippets shared online remains.

Thursday 20 October 2016

Who Owns A Band's Performance?

Rock band promoter Sid Bernstein helped to bring the Beatles to the USA and to set up gigs for them in prestigious venues. Footage from the concerts  was later used in the Beatles film "Eight Days A Week" and in an assortment of documentaries about the band and their role in rock history. This has been the subject of an "intellectual property" rights battle in which the company that held the rights is complaining of infringement of its copyrights — by the Beatles, no less — because they're streaming concert footage on Beatles.com.

Monday 10 October 2016

Africa Not Really Using IPR, IPR Lawyers Not Happy

African countries with fossil fuel and mineral resources are experiencing a growth spurt brought on by investment from Western countries and by China. As a result, the IPR maximalists are being drawn to the nascent opportunities to Lock Away All The Things! like flies to dung. Here's the fun part: despite the creation of the OAPI and the fact that a number of nations have signed up to the Madrid Protocol those dang Africans aren't registering patents, copyright, and trademarks on any and every idea. As a result it seems that there may be issues with the validity and enforceability of IPR that has been registered so far.

You know how IPR is supposed to create and maintain jobs? They're basically in the administration and enforcement of IPR, not in any actual creativity. Still, it's nice work if you can get it. Will you tell Wayne that African countries don't have the kind of mass affluence required to support a parasite industry like IPR enforcement or shall I?

Read more...

That Time Harvard Claimed Copyright On Native American Pottery

When Native American trader Steve Elmore wrote In Search of Nampeyo, The Early Years 1875 - 1892 for the Peabody Museum Press at the behest of Harvard University, little did he know that his intellectual endeavour would turn into a nightmare. Having rejected the book in 2014, Harvard recommended that Mr. Elmore publish elsewhere, so he published the work himself. Then Harvard sued him for infringing the copyright of its photos of the pottery discussed in the book.