The Chicago personal injury law firm is still eager to tell you about your legal rights, but its website, when revisited by Mister Thorne, still proved less than solicitous of the rights of copyright holders (earlier). More: Likelihood of Confusion.
Posts Tagged ‘copyright’
Ads in Google News
Do they change the fair use analysis by which the search giant fends off copyright complaints?
March 3 roundup
- “Illinois trial lawyers take a swing at youth baseball” [Curt Mercadente, Illinois Civil Justice League]
- Luzerne County, Pa. scandal: “Court Filing Says Former Judge Met With Felons Twice a Month” [Legal Intelligencer]
- You’d think Obama could find some person without major-league trial lawyer connections for the cabinet seat on health, but you’d be wrong [Wood, PoL, on Kathleen Sebelius, and earlier on Tom Daschle]
- Remember the many times when town officials do or say something arguably racist and the U.S. Department of Justice opens an investigation? Doesn’t seem to happen with the Detroit City Council [Nolan Finley, Detroit News]
- Copyright enforcement doesn’t scale and that’s another reason its future looks bleak [David Post @ Volokh]
- Thought it wasn’t going to happen? “Some Passengers Mull Lawsuits Over Life-Saving US Airways Crash-Landing” [ABA Journal, WSJ law blog, earlier here and here]
- Sex shop that suddenly appeared in genteel Old Town Alexandria, near D.C. is sort of the zoning equivalent of a spite fence [WaPo]
- Claim of British researchers: lawyers’ IQ-point edge over general public has declined over last decade [The Lawyer]
New Amazon Kindle: Hey, those audio rights are ours!
Vince Offer – a ShamWow-tastic litigator
The new king of the infomercial is Vince Offer, whose abrasive ads for, well, $20 rags and overpriced plastic kitchen gadgets have made him millions and won him an extensive YouTube following.
But Offer thinks he’s an actor/writer/director, though has demonstrated little talent for it; his Underground Comedy Movie, starring such lights as Joey Buttafuoco and Angelyne, got risible reviews.
Of note for this page is that he has had even less success as a litigant. In 1998, Offer brought suit against the Farrelly brothers, implausibly claiming that their hit There’s Something About Mary was plagiarized from his movie. (The Farrelly brothers weren’t impressed: “We’ve never heard of him, we’ve never heard of his movie, and it’s all a bunch of bologna.”) Unfortunately, by bringing the suit under federal copyright law, Offer exposed himself to one of the few two-way fee-shifting statutes out there, and a federal judge had little trouble (literally) rubber-stamping a motion for summary judgment and an order requiring Offer to pay over $66 thousand in attorneys’ fees. (Offer v. Farrelly, Case No. CV 98-7697 RAP(RCx) (C.D. Cal. Jan. 13, 2000); id. (Mar. 14, 2000)).
Offer’s also brought suit against Anna Nicole Smith, and issued a press release threatening to sue The Church of Scientology, but I’m not inclined to spend $4.75 to learn about those cases.
YouTube takedowns
They’re accelerating: Teenagers singing “Winter Wonderland” should not expect their videos to stay up. (Fred von Lohmann, EFF, via Ron Coleman).
Standing up for your legal rights
Unless they’re your copyrights, in which case Chicago’s personal injury firm of Hayman & Kirshenbaum doesn’t seem to be quite so particular (via Turkewitz).
More: Mister Thorne reports that H&K has now removed the cited material, and has a further update.
Annals of overlooked photo permissions
Uh-oh: it appears the most famous American political artwork to come along in decades, Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster, was made without notice to or permission from the photographer who snapped the original image on which it was based. (Prawfsblawg, A Photo Editor).
January 6 roundup
Griffin Bell, Carter AG dead at 90, was (among much else) respected Democratic voice for litigation reform [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
“700,000 squiggles”: historic NY high court crackdown on trial lawyers’ pothole map [NYT; D’Onofrio v. City of New York slip op h/t reader Andrew Barovick; way back, City Journal]
Judge gets off pretty easy after her drunken crash into cop car [Hartford Courant via ChicTrib] Connecticut’s wild-n-crazy judiciary [Courant]
Follow the rules and seat Burris: National Journal quotes me in its bloggers’ poll [Illinois Senate appointment]
Legal history moment: Statute of Anne, 1710, turned copyright law into force for liberty [Cathy Gellis]
Blind editorial squirrel finds acorn: NY Times editorial on Calif good-Samaritan liability not half bad [yes, NYT]
“Win yourself a $50,000 bounty by busting a patent” [Forbes]
Dental student dismissed from University of Michigan wins $1.7 million from four profs, argued that claimed academic deficiencies were just ruse [ABA Journal]
The law does not concern itself with trifling pinball-machine depictions
“The unauthorized placement of a pinball machine in a Mel Gibson movie might have technically violated the copyright laws but it is not actionable, a federal judge has ruled.” In the 2000 movie “What Women Want”, a Silver Slugger pinball machine is fleetingly visible in one scene, never for more than a few seconds at a time. Judge Denny Chin sensibly ruled that the pinball maker had no right to sue Paramount for royalties given that the machine is a mere element of the background: “It never appears by itself or in a close-up. It is never mentioned and plays no role in the plot.” (Mark Hamblett, NYLJ). Earlier here, here, etc.