Last week, Public.Resource.Org, through their counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed an action for declaratory judgement against the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association, Inc. [SMACNA]. In its complaint, Public.Resource.org asserts that since SMACNA’s copyrighted standards were explicitly incorporated into federal and state law, they have become…
Articles Tagged with copyright
On Monday, in the shadow of then-Hurricane (now-Superstorm) Sandy, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., a case involving the applicability of U.S. copyright law to copies of works created and legally acquired abroad and subsequently imported into the United States. In…
Apple was sued for copyright infringement on Wednesday by Swiss fashion and beauty photographer Sabine Liewald. Her lawsuit (below) charges the technology company with unauthorized use of her copyrighted "Eye Closeup" photo in an advertising campaign for Macbook Pro computers, related materials, and a keynote speech, without first obtaining legal…
Photographer Christopher Boffoli has filed a lawsuit against Twitter in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, claiming infringement of copyrighted photographs. The complaint alleges that "Twitter users copied numerous photographs from the Disparity Series without license or permission from Boffoli . . . . [and] were…
In October, we blogged about a lawsuit against the editors of tz info, the time zone database for Unix. The editors were sued by a company called Astrolabe, Inc., who claimed a copyright interest in data used to populate the database. The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff this…
Here is a rundown of October's highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Onward blog and Facebook posts readers viewed the most. Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for October 2011 Dennis Chen, 1,360 points, 28 answers Tanner Woods Pittman, 500 points, 10…
An interesting copyright suit has come across the wires: Astrolable, Inc. v. Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert. The complaint alleges that Defendants infringed on the Plaintiff’s copyright assignment to historical time zone information with their Timezone (tz or zoneinfo) database. The Timezone database, also called the Olson Database, is…
Today, the Food and Drug Administration published its final rule on Required Warnings for Cigarette Packages and Advertisements, 76 Fed. Reg. 36628 (June 22, 2011). In general, the FDA opted for a shock-and-awe approach by requiring graphic images with accompanying warning statements on cigarette packaging. Currently, cigarette packages must bear…
In Mexico, a common line of thought is that projects funded with government money must be a public good. However, Mexican copyright laws challenged this perception after the government-funded Enciclomedia project failed due to fuzzy contracts, political conflicts and a lack of infrastructure. Initially, the goal of Enciclomedia was to…
Attention spans are getting shorter. You can only tweet 140 characters. Courts have pleading length restrictions. Judges' case dockets are packed. So, how can you get your case to seize the attention of the judge? If you can use an image that makes a powerful, effective statement about your client's stance…