Recently British photographer David Slater came to a settlement with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in a lawsuit over who owns the copyright to a selfie taken by a monkey, Naruto, who used his camera to take a photograph of herself on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The photograph was taken in […]
Algorithms are everywhere. Applied to systems like personal assistants, financial exchanges, and self-driving cars, computers now permeate almost every aspect of modern life. But how far should this algorithmic revolution extend into the law? Should contracts, judgement, and litigation strategies follow suit? These questions are at the forefront of Professor Frank Pasquale’s research and were the […]
Some people just can’t take a joke. Other people have taken jokes, and it has landed them in court. Two recent American copyright cases offer an opportunity to look at the difficulties of protecting comedy routines with copyright.
The once proposed PRINCE Act [the Act] has now been set aside after being rushed through the Minnesota state senate. The Act sought to create a new property right in a person’s persona. Canada and the United States both recognize and protect personality rights through similar common law torts. The US appears to also seek […]
The commercial lives of the overwhelming majority of books are remarkably short, particularly when you compare the commercial lives of books to the very long duration of copyright terms. When books are no longer making money for either the publisher or the author, or revenues have slowed to a trickle, authors who signed away their […]
After Starbucks, American Eagle and Roberto Cavalli, it is now Moschino and its designer Jeremy Scott’s turn (yes, again) to face the latest street art copyright infringement case. Joseph Tierny — a New York artist commonly known as Rime — is accusing Moschino and Scott of “inexplicably plac[ing] [his] art on their highest-profile apparel without his knowledge […]
At first, a request for royalties by the estate of Nazi propagandist Goebbels was considered a joke by counsel for Random House. But the publisher now finds itself in the middle of a legal controversy after releasing a biography about the notorious World War 2 Nazi, which largely draws from Goebbels’s diaries.
In the September 2012 battle for broadcast rights to the 2015 Pan American Games, CBC/Radio Canada emerged victorious from what was reportedly described as a "very aggressive bidding process with multiple bidders." In light of the difficult landscape shift CBC has experienced over the past two years, there was serious concern as to how the public broadcaster […]
The prince of appropriation strikes again! Visual artist Richard Prince caused a major uproar in the art world with his latest exhibition, New Portraits. The series of photographs, which features enlarged screenshots of Instagram posts made by different users, has been the object of controversy after it was reportedly found that Prince never asked for […]
On the heels of oral arguments heard before the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) in CBC v SODRAC, the Toronto Intellectual Property Group hosted a fascinating event centered on the principle of technological neutrality from ESA v SOCAN, and how it might be interpreted by the SCC when the case is decided.