The Supreme Court’s Landmark First User Copyright Decision Last week the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark copyright ruling in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley (link goes to a PDF of the full decision). The case concerned the “First Sale” Doctrine, which holds that once a consumer lawfully purchases a copyrighted good, the distribution rights embodied in the copyright are exhausted, and the owner of the product has the right to sell or otherwise dispose of that individual good as he or she pleases. To put it another way, if I buy a copy of Baseball Prospectus 2013 from Amazon, read…
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Keep it Legal Blog
Can You Sue the BBB for an F?
March 20, 2013
Can You Sue the BBB for an F? Can you sue the Better Business Bureau for giving your business an “F?” And why should all consumer-facing businesses care take note of this issue?
Oz the Great and Copyrightable
March 12, 2013
Oz the Great and Copyrightable Disney’s newest fantasy-adventure, Oz the Great and Powerful, was a box office hit last weekend. Filmgoers managed to overlook the absence of certain well-known elements of the Wizard of Oz, most notably Dorothy Gale and her ruby slippers. Was this just because the new Oz movie is a prequel to the beloved classic? Or does the answer require a journey into the Haunted Forest of intellectual property law?
Will the Sequester Affect my Trademark Application?
March 5, 2013
Will the Sequester Affect my Trademark Application? As part of the endless series of Washington financial hijinks, the so-called sequester went into effect last Thursday, February 28. The sequester is a series of spending cuts amounting to $1.2 trillion over nine years, with $85 billion coming due in the remainder of Fiscal Year 2013. Given that these cuts impact all sorts of Federal agencies, I couldn’t help but think about the poor, neglected US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Will trademark applications be impacted by the sequester?
