News and Commentary
Defendants in a copyright suit brought against countless sites, ranging from Breitbart to Vox to Time, over whether or not they can post a picture uploaded by someone to Snapchat which then made its way around the web, was just settled. Justin Goldman, photographer of an image of Tom Brady and Danny Ainge, posted they picture to Snapchat, where it then went viral. He sued and prevailed in District Court, but after a failed appeal the defendants decided to settle.
Virginia Vallejo, Colombian media personality and mistress of Pablo Escobar, (mostly) failed to win a copyright infringement lawsuit against Netflix, maker of the show Narcos. Her claim was narrowed to one specific scene documenting an intimate encounter with the drug lord.
In The Hill, Raymond F. Kerins Jr, chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center makes a plea for us to respect the intellectual property rights of movie studios. Pirating apparently “means stealing from these individuals and their families,” to the tune of $50 billion per year. That may sound like a lot, but, to date, Avengers: Endgame alone has made $2.7 billion worldwide with a budget of $356 million.
Maury Riad of Fugio, a working space for designers located in New York, bemoans the fact that interior designers are “denied true authorship” for their works because interior designs are not copyrightable.
New Research
A new NBER paper examines the dynamics of crowdfunding. While not directly related to intellectual property, it demonstrates that in an environment where there are donors who are simply interested in seeing a project succeed (as opposed to only buyers, who expect something), there are conditions under which projects can be fully funded without the expectation of any return.
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