Copyright Strikes Back
By Maria Sol Porro, Trademarks Lawyer, and University Professor
On Monday, June 17, a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ruled against VidAngel and fined the video filtering service $62.4 million which it must pay in reparation for damages to the plaintiffs, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Lucasfilm.
VidAngel, launched in 2013, is an entertainment platform that was created to help families filter out language, nudity, violence, and other content from movies and TV series. The independent company made international news in 2016 when Walt Disney Co., Lucasfilms, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. all filed a lawsuit against it, claiming the video streaming service was infringing on their copyrighted material. During the trial, the Provo-based startup had previously filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and are currently still going through those proceedings.
In this context, the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles has reported that the platform streamed at least 800 titles from the studios meaning they will end up having to pay $150,000 per title in the ruling. The company’s defense was that VidAngel committed innocent infringement and should, therefore, be required to pay much less. Facing this disadvantageous ruling, VidAngel CEO …
Read MoreNew domain “.pharmacy”
A new generic top-level web domain was launched by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP). The intention of this release is to be able to identify web sites that sell online prescriptions drugs in a legal and reliable way.
The register for this new web domain (.pharmacy) will be the first step in this process and is expected to begin in November 2014. For the moment, only companies that have already filed trademarks in the International Center for the defense of trademarks of ICANN can request a register in .pharmacy.
NABP applied for .pharmacy as a community-based gTLD representing legitimate online pharmacies and prescription drug-related organizations worldwide. This global pharmacy community includes, but is not limited to:
- Independent community pharmacies
- Chain pharmacies and any retailers offering pharmacy services
- Internet pharmacies
- Veterinary pharmacies
- Schools and colleges of pharmacy and continuing professional education providers
- Wholesale drug distributors
- Pharmaceutical manufacturers
- Durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and supply providers
- Medical professionals advertising services related to a prescription drug
Source: http://www.nabp.net…
Read MorePhotographer wins lawsuit against companies that took pics off Twitter
Recently a federal jury ordered two image licensing companies to pay $1.2 million to a freelance photojournalist for their unauthorized use of photographs he posted on Twitter. The $1.2 million was the maximum penalty available under the Copyright Act.
The jury found that two agencies had violated the Copyright Act; due to the use of photos taken by the photographer in Haiti after the earthquake that killed more than 250 thousand people.
This case is the first one to address how images available to the public by any social media such as Facebook or Twitter, can be used by others for commercial purposes. It is important to highlight that this is the first time the court established the liability for willful violations of the Copyright Act for this kind of actions.
On the other hand, in Latin America the regulation of pictures uploaded on Twitter or Facebook has not yet been addressed properly. Due to the lack of rules about this issue, it’s possible that the above mentioned resolution could be repeated in any court room in Latin America.
The commercial use of photographs published in any social media is definitely a trendy topic and should …
Read MoreThird annual Gastro-Intellectual Property Symposium at Chicago-Kent on November 7th
Save the date! Buy your tickets now for the Third annual Gastro-Intellectual Property Symposium at Chicago-Kent on November 7th.
Chicago Kent IPLS announces the Third Annual Gastro-Intellectual Property Law Symposium, which will focus on trademark issues related to the Cuban Embargo, and what might happen when the embargo ends.
Mariano Municoy, IP Lawyer at Moeller, is panelist at this event, together with Judith L. Grubner, partner at Arnstein & Lehr LLP and Joseph F. Schmidt.
For more information click here.…
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