News and Commentary
The Hollywood Reporter writes about the $20 million copyright infringement claim made against Paramount Pictures based solely on a draft screenplay being circulated. The dispute centers on whether or not the rights to a reboot and sequel had reverted to the statutory heir to Truman Capote.
This writeup in Bloomberg Law discusses the economics of viral marketing using the meme, and more importantly the legal implications of using images that are widespread across the internet.
It would appear that the intellectual property dispute between Evermore theme park–which sued Taylor Swift for Trademark Infringement–and Taylor Swift–who sued the theme park for unauthorized performances of Swift’s music–has been settled.
Haley Ball in Intellectual Property Brief writes about the recent incidents regarding police officers playing music while being filmed in an apparent attempt to trigger copyright filters on streaming sites like Instagram. Instagram commented that their filters take into account a number of factors, but in general it’s unclear whether those filters will be smart enough to identify a clear attempt to shut down measures to improve police accountability.
Glyn Moody discusses the City of London Police’s new warnings related to going on sci-hub, repeating lines about the overstated (if not completely fabricated) risks of accessing the site mixed with warnings about the dangers of Sci-Hub to academic publishers’ rights.
Mike Masnick writes about a letter sent by Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to the newly appointed Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to aggressively enforce the recently enacted felony streaming bill to go after online piracy.
An article in JDSupra discussed the practical effects and operations of copyright rolls, and advises the potential victims of trolls on how to proceed if they receive a frivolous (though not necessarily legally invalid) claim of copyright infringement.
Ed Silverman writes for Stat News about the Department of Health and Human Services’ ownership of a key patent instrumental to the Moderna vaccine, and how many encourage the government to make the patent freely available as a means to boost production.
New Research
A new paper by Nancy S. Kim examines the increased prevalence of licensing online, questioning the assumptions over whether or not the framework under which licensing operates–that more transactions is better–is a desirable one and whether we should be focused on the “quality” of transactions, i.e. whether or not consumers can truly own what they purchase.
A new paper published by NBER examines the economics of patent auctions, where non-rivalrous but (legally) excludable goods are sold. They find that buying coalitions can be good for sellers, but ones which are too large harm revenue and social welfare and that multi-license auctions are superior to patent auctions in many contexts.
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