First Sale Doctrine
As esoteric as the subject matter of this blog can be, I tend to stay away from the really, really, really nitty-gritty legal discussions for fear that most of you don’t really care. Heck, I barely care sometimes. But the first sale doctrine is an important aspect of the Copyright Act. Basically (and over-simplistically), it [...]
Harry Potter
The vast majority of software is protected under the Copyright Act as a work “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” Some is patented, but copyright automatically affixes itself to any software as it’s being written – and it’s cheap (currently $30) to obtain a registered Copyright. So it’s important sometimes to watch what litigation [...]
Malware Licensing
Wow. More here. And here. And here (from the original Symantec Alert). (For those who don’t want to click the links, a malware author inserted a EULA into their virus code.) First, let’s be clear. Even though the software could be used for malicious purposes, this doesn’t affect the ability to license it. Copyright protection [...]
Terms of Use
The SaaS/ASP ship has sailed and we’re now living in a world in which online services will continue to proliferate and will probably (by some estimates) overtake installed software in the next few years. Each one of these services has some sort of Terms of Use or Terms of Service and as you might imagine, [...]
IP Donation?
I saw this on the intertubes today and found the image hilarious, but the concept really academically interesting. Would such a donation attempt actually hold water? Can a copyright holder effectively turn his/her IP over to the public domain this easily? What if you’ve registered with the US Copyright Office? Anyone wanna’ hazard a guess? [...]
Holiday AND Intellectual Property related… how about that?
THIS is the reason there’s a parody exception in copyright law. (Never mind that most of the songs aren’t protected anymore.) Happy Holidays!
Two-Top Tuesday
Thanks to Apple’s press release yesterday regarding iPhone unlocking tools and the iPhone’s warranty and license agreements, you get a special second-post (I’m also still feeling guilty about last week). “CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to [...]
Copyright, the iPhone and You
The new iPods were released on Wednesday, along with a drop in the price of the iPhone – and Steve Jobs then announced a little tweak to allow an individual to “buy” a song solely for the creation of a custom ringtone. He was excited that you’d pay $.99 for the song and then $.99 [...]
A Fair(y) Use Tale
In this special TGIF edition of the Licensinghandbook Blog, take 10 minutes out of your busy day to watch the following “Fair(y) Use Tale” by Eric Faden. If you’ve ever wondered about copyright law and the fair use exception, there aren’t many better ways to learn: The Licensing Handbook Blog is the companion site to [...]
Copyright reform
Jonathan Lethem would like to see a world where each artist can decide, at the time of their creation’s release, the rights their customers/fans/etc will have with respects to using, copying, recycling, etc that creation. As part of this, he’s going to release certain film rights and other derivative work rights to his next creation, [...]
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