2024-02-28 23:54
A very brief summary of where pending AI lawsuits stand as of February 28, 2024. Compiled by Minnesota attorney Thomas James.
Thomson Reuters v. Ross, (D. Del. 2020)
Filed May 6, 2020… Read More
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The official law blog of Thomas B. James of the Law Office of Tom James in Cokato, Minnesota. In this blog, Thomas James presents news and commentary on legal developments in copyright and trademark law.
2024-02-09 21:43
A reversal in the 4th Circuit Court demonstrates the impact the Supreme Court’s decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts v. Goldsmith is already having on the application of cop… Read More
2024-02-08 20:43
Creative expressions generally are protected by copyright law. Sometimes, however, they are not. When that is the case, a work is said to be in “the public domain.”
The rules… Read More
2024-01-03 03:41
Partial list of signficant works entering into the public domain in the United States in 2024.
When the term of a copyright expires, the work enters the public domain, meaning that it ma… Read More
2024-01-01 00:29
2023 was a big year for U.S. intellectual property law. Major developments occurred in every area. Here are the highlights.
Copyright
Fair Use
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual… Read More
2023-11-09 01:00
FTC Press Release exceprtWhile Congress and the courts are grappling with the copyright issues that AI has generated, the federal government’s primary consumer watchdog has made a rare… Read More
2023-10-31 19:10
Artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz filed a class action lawsuit against Stability AI, DeviantArt, and MidJourney in federal district court alleging causes of action… Read More
2023-10-14 02:47
Black hole consuming a star. Photo credit: NASA. What are your favorite generative-AI copyright issues? In this capsule summary, Cokato attorney Tom James shares what his three favorites are… Read More
2023-09-19 22:14
Congressional legislation to regulate artificial intelligence (“AI”) and AI companies is in the early formative stages. Just about the only thing that is certain at this point is… Read More
2023-09-11 00:12
Image by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay.What is generative AI?
“AI,” of course, stands for artificial intelligence. Generative AI is a variety of it that can produce content such as… Read More
2023-09-08 01:30
Last June, Microsoft, OpenAI and others were hit with a class action lawsuit involving their AI data-scraping technologies. On Tuesday (September 5, 2023) another class action lawsuit was fi… Read More
2023-08-30 22:25
Over a year ago, Steven Thaler filed an application with the United States Copyright Office to register a copyright in an AI-generated image called “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.&rdqu&hell…Read More
2023-08-19 20:47
In a previous blog post, I wrote about a lawsuit that book publishers Hachette Book Group et al. have filed against Internet Archive (“IA”) et al. The lawsuit alleges that IA… Read More
2023-08-16 23:23
Copyright issues raised by generative-AI (artificial intelligence) have been receiving extensive coverage and discussion lately. Generative-AI has given rise to another kind of problem, too… Read More
2023-07-30 20:27
Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is generating more than content; it is generating lawsuits. Here is a brief chronology of what I believe are the most significant lawsuits that hav… Read More
2023-05-24 19:50
[Guest post by David Newhoff, author of The Illusion of More and Who Invented Oscar Wilde? The Photograph at the Center of Modern American Copyright.]
Just as it is folly to anthropomorphize… Read More
2023-05-04 19:59
The United States Supreme Court has weighed First Amendment rights in the balance against many things: privacy, national security, the desire to protect children from hearing a bad word on… Read More
2023-04-07 16:55
Bertini v. Apple Inc., No. 21-2301 (Fed. Cir. 2023). Apple, Inc. attempted to register the trademark APPLE MUSIC for both sound recordings and live musical performances (among other things)… Read More
2023-03-31 00:16
In the United States, as in most countries, it is possible to own a copyright without registering it. Copyright registration is not a prerequisite to copyright protection. Rather, a copyrigh… Read More
2023-03-26 17:08
In June, 2020 four book publishers filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Internet Archive. The publishers asserted that the practice of scanning books and lending digital copies of… Read More
2023-03-16 23:27
On Thursday, March 16, 2023, the United States Copyright Office published new guidance regarding the registration of copyrights in AI-generated material. in the Federal Register. Here is the… Read More
2023-03-06 22:02
The United States Copyright Claims Board (CCB), an administrative tribunal that has been established for the purposes of resolving small copyright claims, began accepting case filings on Jun… Read More
2023-02-26 19:59
Last year, the United States Copyright Office issued a copyright registration to Kristina Kashtanova for the graphic novel, Zarya of the Dawn. A month later, the Copyright Office issued a no… Read More
2023-02-25 17:22
Guest blogger David Newhoff lays out the argument against the claim that training AI systems with copyright-protected works is fair use. David is the author of Who Invented Oscar Wilde?… Read More
2023-02-14 19:44
A guest post written by David Newhoff. AI, of course, stands for “artificial intelligence.” David is the author of Who Invented Oscar Wilde? The Photograph at the Center of Moder… Read More
2023-02-07 20:38
In a previous post, I reported on a lawsuit that Getty Images had filed in the United Kingdom against Stability AI. Now the company has filed similar claims against the company in the United… Read More
2023-02-03 01:41
AI is not new. Its implementation also is not new. In fact, consumers regularly interact with AI-powered systems every day. Online help systems often use AI to provide quick answers to quest… Read More
2023-01-25 00:44
The Input Question in AI Copyright Law
by Thomas James, Minnesota attorney
In a previous blog post, I discussed the question whether AI-generated creations are protected by copyright… Read More
2023-01-03 02:33
Thousands of books, movies, songs and other creative works enter the public domain in the United States this year. Here is a partial list. (Click here for last year’s list).
Sherloc… Read More
2022-12-26 21:43
My selections for the top copyright cases of the year.
“Dark Horse”
Marcus Gray had sued Katy Perry for copyright infringement, claiming that her “Dark Horse”… Read More
2022-12-06 21:58
by Thomas B. James (“The Cokato Copyright Attorney”)
Effective December 3, 2022 the deadline for responding to a U.S. Trademark Office Action is shortened from 6 months to 3… Read More
2022-11-27 19:03
In my last blog post (“MSCHF Testing the Limits of Free Speech“) I wrote about the Wavy Baby Shoes case in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Now, in a different case raising s… Read More
2022-11-08 19:55
The owner of a trademark has the exclusive right to use it in commerce. The scope of the right is geographically limited, but if it is registered with the USPTO, then the owner’s exclu… Read More
2022-08-26 18:25
The Internet has created an existential crisis for copyrights. Well, not really. It has impelled some people to consider, for the first time, the rationale for copyrights and the legal prote… Read More
2022-08-18 23:50
In a previous post, I identified the Second Circuit’s decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith as one of the three top copyright cases of 2021. It has since… Read More
2022-07-21 20:29
Thomas James (“The Cokato Copyright Attorney”) explains how Hachette Book Group et al. v. Internet Archive, filed in the federal district court for the Southern District of New Y… Read More
2022-06-23 22:28
It happened. “The” is a registered trademark now. The USPTO issued a registration certificate for the word “The” to Ohio State University (Sorry; the Ohio State Unive… Read More
2022-06-16 23:09
The Copyright Claims Board (“copyright small claims court”) launched today (June 16, 2022), on schedule.
The New Copyright Claims Board
The new “copyright small clai… Read More
2022-06-08 22:01
The Copyright Claims Board is scheduled to begin accepting claims on June 16, 2022. What could this mean for you?
The Purpose of the Copyright Claims Board
Due in large part to th… Read More
2022-06-07 02:57
The U.S. Copyright Office has announced that the new Copyright Claims Board (CCB) will begin accepting claim filings on June 16, 2022.
Dubbed the “copyright small claims court… Read More
2022-05-26 00:16
by Tom James, Minnesota attorney
a
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.What’s the problem?HAL: I think you know what th… Read More
2022-05-05 18:01
by Tom James, Minnesota attorney
In December 2020, Congress passed the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020. More commonly known as the CASE Act, it directs… Read More
2022-03-23 08:09
by Minnesota attorney Tom James
“You’re driving over the ocean in the Florida Keys when suddenly you get a hankering for a slice of pizza. Unfortunately, there is no toll boot… Read More
2022-03-08 09:27
by Minnesota attorney Thomas James (not Ernest Hemingway, the guy in the picture)
I am, of course, late with this. Where other writers have simply listed works by author, title and descr… Read More
2022-02-25 04:26
By Thomas James, Minnesota attorney
In Fourth Estate Public Benefits Corp. v. Wall-Street.com LLC, 139 S. Ct. 881, 889 (2019), the United States Supreme Court interpreted 17 U.S.C. §… Read More
2022-02-19 20:00
The Nike and “JRR Token” cases
by Cokato attorney Tom James
Minting and selling digital tokens can raise copyright issues, trademark issues, or both. I talked about copyrig… Read More
2022-02-11 02:01
by Minnesota attorney Thomas James
The rise in popularity of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) has generated considerable controversy and confusion about whether and how copyright law applies to… Read More
2022-02-03 19:54
by Cokato attorney Tom James
Most people are familiar with a few gTLDs (generic top level domains). The gTLDs .com, .net, .biz, .info, .edu and .gov come to mind. The list of available gT… Read More
2022-01-27 22:54
by Cokato attorney Tom James
Photo credit: Marcus Hansson Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 GenericIn 2020, New York legislators introduced bills (S2890 and A5837) to require book pu… Read More
2022-01-21 22:17
by Thomas James Minnesota attorney
Dune is a widely-acclaimed 1965 science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. It is set in the future, at a time when feudalism exists on an interstellar scal… Read More
2022-01-12 22:16
By Tom James, Minnesota attorney
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 was signed into law on December 27, 2020. Most people have heard of the provisions relating to COVID-1… Read More
2021-12-23 10:09
by Minnesota attorney Thomas James
I initially had set out to put together a “Top 10” list. Really, though, I think the list can be boiled down to three. Admittedly, this is o… Read More
2021-12-09 20:43
Photo by [email protected] on Unsplashby Thomas James, Law Office of Tom James, Cokato MN
This week, the Copyright Alliance and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Inno… Read More
2021-12-07 12:10
Take my joke.Please.I could use the statutory damages
by Thomas James, Law Office of Tom James
You might have noticed that Spotify has removed a lot of comedy performances recently… Read More
2021-11-28 01:24
By Tom James, Published in 2020
Read the full article at: open.mitchellhamline.edu
“Sales and Use Tax Nexus: The Way Forward for Legislation,” Mitchell-Hamline Law Journa… Read More
2021-11-21 01:51
Trying to get this website working Read More
2021-11-20 07:17
Thanks for joining me!
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton Read More
2021-11-05 05:03
by Minnesota attorney Thomas James
(originally published in the University of Illinois Law Review.)
No formalities are required to establish a copyright. It arises automa… Read More
2021-10-29 01:34
The U.S. Copyright Office Report on Sovereign Immunity
by attorney Thomas B James, Law Office of Tom James
Background
The Copyright Remedies Clarification Act (CRCA) was a U.S. law purporti… Read More
2021-08-20 03:07
The new GRAM and GRUW applications finally make it affordable
If you’ve written a song, you want to share it. You feel a pressing need to share it. Of course you do. As Paul Simon o… Read More
2021-01-31 20:55
You and your band are sitting in your makeshift studio when Jack, the bass player, suddenly announces that he has an idea for a song. He has worked out the words, melody, and arrangement pa… Read More
2020-12-28 18:17
On December 27, 2020 President Trump signed the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (CASE Act). Part of a year-end pandemic relief and appropriations bill, it esta… Read More
2020-12-21 05:15
The Ninth Circuit has ruled that “Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go” (a mash-up of Dr. Seuss and Star Trek) is not fair use. The ruling may come as a surprise to some, inclu… Read More
2020-12-09 04:03
As a rule, the U.S. Copyright Office does not allow you to register the copyrights in published works together if they were published at different times. This rule came into being during th… Read More
2020-12-03 03:28
(photo credit: Andreas Praefcke)
It is black letter law that copyright only protects expression. No one can claim a copyright in facts. As long as you use your own words, you are free to re… Read More
2020-11-18 19:59
In USPTO v. Booking.com (slip op. 2020), the United States Supreme Court held that a trademark sometimes can be claimed in a generic term combined with a TLD indicator (such as “.com&r&hell…Read More
2020-10-20 23:10
In an earlier blog post, I discussed Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, which held that the Sherlock Holmes character, insofar as it had been developed prior to 1923, is now in the public… Read More
2019-09-27 01:39
Most people are aware that it is necessary to apply to the U.S. Copyright Office before you can file an infringement claim in a United States court. Merely applying for one, however, might n… Read More
2017-09-14 17:35
The recent hacking of credit reporting giant Equifax has put as many as 143 million Americans and some U.K. and Canadian residents at risk of identity theft. The security beach includes name… Read More
2017-07-15 18:16
When I was in law school, a final exam question presented a scenario involving a squirrel who falls into an open container of gasoline on private property, scurries to another property wher… Read More
2016-07-30 18:03
A new Minnesota law effective August 1, 20161 authorizes a court, upon motion, to treat a former spouse’s cohabitation after a divorce as a reason to modify or even terminate the other… Read More
2016-05-13 03:47
[Photo: Micahmedia at en.wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons]
Minnesota’s pro… Read More
2016-02-27 04:00
I’ve written before about how sole maternal custody laws are unfair to unwed fathers. And many people have written about how sole custody is bad for children. People don’t often… Read More
2015-11-30 21:58
The U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari this year in the case of Bolden v. Does (In re Adoption of J.S.)1 is disappointing. This case presented the Court with a perfect opportun… Read More
2015-10-31 20:52
The donning of costumes on Halloween is a long but increasingly risky tradition. The possibility that a particular costume might insult or offend another person’s religious… Read More
2015-09-24 00:12
(from court documents)
Restaurants, business owners, authors and producers no longer have to pay a copyright royalty to perform the “Happy Birthday” song. A federal district cou… Read More
2015-08-24 02:16
In a previous blog post1 I explained why custody designations still matter, in terms of their impact on legal rights. The bigger question behind that one is: Should custody labels stil… Read More
2015-08-15 19:34
(Photo by Screen Classics (Test Tube Babies (1948) at the Internet Archive) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
To enable married couples to become legal parents despite the husband&rsqu&hell…Read More
2015-08-02 16:43
Which of the following statements is/are true?
(a) Copying up to 25 words is fair use.
(b) Copying less than 10 percent is fair use.
(c) Copying 25 words or 10% is fair use.
(d) C… Read More
2015-07-09 01:25
(USPTO Reg. No. 0986668)
A judge of the U.S. district court for the eastern district of Virginia issued a ruling today that should finally bring more than two decades of litigation over the… Read More
2015-07-03 22:11
A trademark can lose its distinctiveness if it comes to be used as a synonym for the product itself, and no longer serves as an indicator of the origin (maker) of the product. When this happ… Read More
2015-06-26 16:34
The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its long-awaited decision on same-sex marriage. By a 5-4 vote, it has ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between tw… Read More
2015-06-22 20:54
(U.S. Patent No. 5,072,856)
The biggest question raised by this case is: Why did the U.S. Supreme Court grant review?
The case involves a patented web-shooting mechanism that had been transf… Read More
2015-06-14 09:42
(RKO release poster, 1946)
Those in the over-thirty crowd probably have many fond and/or maddening memories of flipping channels throughout the Christmas season to decide which network broad… Read More
2015-05-31 21:50
To protect web-based services providers from liability for infringing content that is uploaded by users of their services, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has established a set of notic… Read More
2015-05-25 09:17
(Photo: T.Voekler (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons)
At one time in the not-so-distant past, a car was a relatively simple machine. Owners could easily do a lot of the repai… Read More
2015-05-03 20:24
At the current time there is a professed aversion to custody “labels” in legal circles, coupled with a shift of emphasis from deciding who gets custody, to deciding how par… Read More
2015-04-24 21:54
The Internet is transforming the music industry from a sales-of-copies model to a sales-of-access model. Instead of buying CD’s, more and more people are subscribing to digital pl… Read More
2015-04-12 19:36
(Scene from “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” Warner Bros., 1932)
Before closing down the custody litigation side of my practice, I had opportunities on several occasions to h… Read More
2015-04-04 20:33
“Presumptive joint custody” refers to the idea that parents should share custody of their children unless some good reason is shown to exist, in a particular case, for… Read More
2015-03-28 19:43
Equality, I spoke the word as if a wedding vow,
But I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.
–Bob Dylan (“My Back Pages”)
Debates about custody la… Read More
2015-03-21 21:08
Currently, most custody law reform efforts aim to either establish or refine a shared parenting paradigm (as distinguished from single parenting, which is still the most prevalent… Read More
2015-03-14 14:36
(promotional poster for “The Blob,” Paramount Pictures, 1958)
You’ve just come up with “Sonic Protoplasm” or some other great name for your band. A trademark s… Read More
2015-02-22 01:02
(Photo: “485 Schildkröten – cutted”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons)
Most people assume copyright protection is governed exclusively by the federal… Read More
2015-02-15 00:53
(“Lost Child,” by Enrique Melida)
Stakeholder, like competencies and bucketization, is a term for which business managers and corporate officers have developed a special fondness… Read More
2015-02-09 03:52
Dusten Brown with the biological daughter he lost to adoption. (Photo: Associated Press, 2013)
The Minnesota legislature is set to remove the parents’ wishes as a consideration wh… Read More
2015-01-25 21:07
Parent education
Parent education programs for divorcing parents, mandated in every divorce case involving children, is probably the least controversial reform that has been suggested in the… Read More
2015-01-17 20:15
Nonadversarial models
In most countries, including the United States, court processes are designed for adversaries. A competitive, zero-sum model is used: one party wins something; one party… Read More
2015-01-03 19:29
Custody law traditionally has been conceived as a contest for a prize. The winner of the contest is “awarded” the prize of custody, i.e., the right to continue parenting a coupl… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
As we have seen, the common law treated women, but not men, as having natural rights to the custody of their children. At common law, a man could acquire a legal right to custody of his chil… Read More
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