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Intellectual Property Law: Size Matters for TVs on Super Bowl Sunday
A familiar question dependably re-emerges at about this time each year. It essentially asks “can I get in copyright trouble for having a Super Bowl party with a big screen TV?” This post gives you some ground rules in order to spare everyone from the possibility of being arrested by the copyright police . (Disclaimer:…
Read MoreIntellectual Property Law: Just Because You Paid For That Custom Software Does Not Mean You Own It.
Companies sometimes pay large sums of money to independent contractors to create a custom software program and mistakenly assume that they own the result. Many companies have valuable intellectual property developed within their business, one of which is rights in copyrighted materials. Copyrights do not involve just novels and artwork; they can include software programs,…
Read MoreUniversity of Alabama seeing Crimson over recent ruling?
In University of Alabama v New Life Art, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals resolved a portion of a long standing dispute over the protection afforded authentic reproductions of college uniforms. A painter made paintings (and calendars) accurately depicting University of Alabama games. For many years this practice was unlicensed, but done with the knowledge…
Read MoreRecent court decision in Oracle v Google raises serious copyright questions in certain types of software
In a decision in the Oracle v Google case, the court held that APIs – application program interfaces – small amounts of human readable source code, are not sufficiently original to qualify as copyrights. This decision can impact API licenses, which most likely are based on copyrights. What Google did. Google decided that to construct…
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