Intellectual Property Advice from Industry Experts

Podcast:

Derivative Work podcast by Doug Lichtman from the Intellectual Property Colloquium

http://www.ipcolloquium.com/

There are many legal issues that arise when an individual creates a derivative work from another copyrighted piece of intellectual property. This blog describes the unauthorized creation of an encyclopedia of Harry Potter by a company known as RDR books. The problem here is that original material was actually copied from the original Harry Potter series. This led to a lawsuit filed from Warner against RDR. Due to the fact that the encyclopedia basically copied a lot of original works from Harry Potter, led to copyright infringement. If the work created was original and not directly from the original Harry Potter, the work may not have violated copyrights and have been considered a derivative work.

Podcast:

Copyright termination by Doug Lichtman from the Intellectual Property Colloquium

http://www.ipcolloquium.com/

The original copyright act that allowed authors the rights to their works for a period of 14 to 28 years, depending on the law of the time, and then the author could renew the copyright for another 14 to 28 years. However, if the author sold the copyright or the rights to the copyrighted work, when it came time to renew the copyright, the rights would come back to the original author instead of the new owner of the rights or copyright. Thus, copyright transfer deals started happening in both copyright periods so that the new owner would have the renewal in their own name. However, the copyright termination right allows authors to reclaim their original copyright after 35 years of the copyright transfer. This is dangerous because if you are paying a lot for the rights to a copyrighted work, your license or ownership can be terminated and rights be transferred back to the original owner.

Podcast:

Entertainment Law Update Episode 13  - copyrights, trademarks, fair use – Gordon P. Firemark, Esq.

http://www.entertainmentlawupdate.com/

In this podcast one of the many cases discussed was a case of Jay-Z v. Ahab Joseph Nafal. Mr. Nafal claimed copyright infringement on one of Jay-Z’s hit singles, “Big Pimpin”, claiming that the hit single from Jay-Z violated one of his Egyptian compositions known as, “Khosara Khosara”, which was written by Baligh Hamdi. Apparently Nafal tried to argue that he acquired the rights to the song through a third party, which got the rights from a relative of Hamdi. After a little research into the claim, it turns out Nafal never got exclusive rights to the Egyptian composition and therefore the judge threw the case out, claiming Nafal had no rights to sue over a composition that he did not own a copyright for. Moral of this case: Make sure you are getting rights to a composition from the correct copyright owner, or purchasing the copyright from the correct owner.