Lawsuit
No Laughing Matter: Copyright Protection for Jokes
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.
Big Telecom versus Video Games: Big Implications
As reported on Kotaku.com – "British Telecommunications, a multinational mega-conglomerate with origins dating back to the 1800s, is suing Valve, a video game company that can't count to three". British Telecommunications (BT) alleges that on-line services offered by Valve infringe on four U.S. patents held by BT. The patents at trial are broadly worded and could implicate […]
Do War Criminals Have Copyrights? The Role of Morality in Controversial Works
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.