News of the Week; April 8, 2020

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

1. Canada legislates the use of inventions during the pandemic
2. Amendments to the Patent Act in response to COVID-19
3. “Lightly Sketched” Characters Not Copyrightable
4. The Batmobile is Copyrightable… Your Cute and Fuzzy Characters May Not Be
5. Copyright Protection for the Selection and Arrangement of Uncopyrightable Elements: Gray v. Perry
6. Court schools overzealous copyright licensor, holding that high school choir arrangement was fair use and awarding choir defendants their attorney’s fees
7. That Coronavirus Image Is Public Domain, But That Won’t Stop Getty From Trying To Sell You A $500 License To Use It
8. Lightbulb Moment: It’s Possible to Grant an Implied Copyright Sublicense
9. Johannsongs-Publishing, Ltd. v. Rolf Lovland: Court grants summary judgment for “You Raise Me Up” finding it not similar to Icelandic song “Soknudur” excluding musicologist’s reports as unreliable and unhelpful.
10. Waite v. Universal Music Group: In class action involving termination of grants of copyrighted under U.S. Copyright Act, court finds recordings were not works made for hire that would be ineligible for termination.
11. Copyright Termination. Special Report: Two SDNY Decisions on the Same Day!
12. World’s Worst Copyright Trolling Lawyer, Richard Liebowitz, Files Lawsuit Against Ellen Barkin For Posting Photo Of Herself
13. SCOTUS Sinks the CRCA, Confirms States are Immune from Copyright Suits
14. US Supreme Court Holds Unanimously That States Cannot Be Sued for Damages in Copyright Infringement Suits
15. States Can Be Pirates: Managing Business Copyright Protections
16. Response Clothing Limited v The Edinburgh Woollen Mill Limited: The Edinburgh Woollen Mill finds itself in a stitch following infringement of copyright in wave design fabric
17. Ninth Circuit Rallies in Defense of a Parody Dog Toy–Bad Spaniels v. Jack Daniel’s
18. Southern District of New York Revisits Tiffany v. eBay in Chanel’s Lawsuit Against The RealReal
19. Court Approves Settlement Between BMI and Radio Music Licensing Committee, Though Terms Are Not Yet Public – Many Other Music Licensing Issues Still Facing the Radio Industry
20. Anti-Piracy Copyright Lawyer Decides To Abuse Trademarks To Shut Down Pirates
21. Protecting against digital trademark infringement
22. Federal Circuit Says Logos Must Be Taken Seriously in Evaluating Infringement of Design Patents
23. Bad Faith Finding Still Required to Ban Patent Infringement Accusations
24. University libraries offer online “lending” of scanned in-copyright books
25. Patents in Crisis: Is there a Solution in Sight?
26. Predictive Text Patent Troll Tries To Shake Down Wikipedia
27. Bad Idea Is Bad: Senator Sasse Wants To Give Whoever Patents COVID-19 Treatments 10 Extra Years Of Patent Protection
28. How intellectual property rights can protect automotive designs
29. Dr. Drew apologizes for being a COVID-19 denier after copyright silliness: Dr. Drew coronavirus supercut restored to YouTube after copyright takedown.
30. Dr. Drew Pinsky Played Down COVID-19, Then Tries To DMCA Away The Evidence
31. Should Your Company Grant a Free License to Your Company’s Intellectual Property in Response to the COVID-19 Emergency?
32. COVID-19 and the future of open access
33. 3D printing and IP in a pandemic
34. Corona Beer vs coronavirus: effects on the company’s brand and its response
35. Those Ex-Theranos Patents Look Really Bad; Contest Opened To Find Prior Art To Get Them Invalidated
36. No Need to Wonder Anymore: Ninth Circuit Holds Stairway to Heaven Does Not Infringe Taurus
37. The Final Revenge of Queen Anne’s Revenge: State’s Use of Photographs Is Not Piracy
38. Role of IP in the Growth of Disney
39. Sky v SkyKick: was the CJEU swayed by Sky’s well-known brand?
40. Religious Institutions v. COVID-19: Why Religious Institutions Should Think Twice Before Live Streaming
41. Supreme Court rules on balancing of copyright and fundamental rights (Sweeden)
42. CJEU: hiring out cars with radio receivers not communication to the public
43. “Don’t change the station! I like this song” – the CJEU clarifies ‘communication to the public’ (again)
44. EU Says That, No, Rental Car Companies Don’t Need To Pay A License To Rent Cars With Radios That Might Play Music
45. CJEU finds Amazon not liable for direct infringement by unwittingly stocking infringing goods being sold through its website
46. European Court of Justice Holds Amazon Not Liable for Storing Third-Party Sellers’ Infringing Products, Another Reason Why Brands Must Take Greater Control In The European Market
47. Amazon: no infringing use but online platforms still in hot water?
48. Companies are Not only Sharing IP, They are Enabling Others to Copy Their Product
49. Protecting Intellectual Property and Data if Employee Separation is Anticipated
50. The issue of confidentiality in Intellectual Property litigation
51. Social Links: Biden’s stance on CDA §230; liability for user-generated content; Twitter’s process for reviewing Trump’s tweets
52. SoundCloud now lets artists add a direct donation button to their page: To help musicians affected by the pandemic
53. Machine Learning Patentability in 2019: 5 Cases Analyzed and Lessons Learned Part 5
54. When Computers Invent: How the Use of Artificial Intelligence to Treat COVID-19 Highlights Novel Inventorship Issues
55. Ten Years Later—Lessons Learned from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston Kokoschka Case
56. Activision scores First Amendment victory in Humvee trademark lawsuit
57. Activision has a First Amendment right to use Humvees in Call of Duty
58. Humvee Can’t Stop Depictions of Its Vehicles in the ‘Call of Duty’ Videogame–AM General v. Activision Blizzard (Eric Goldman)
59. Tencent sues tech company for putting its games on rival cloud service without permission: League of Legends, CrossFire, and Dungeon Fighter Online allegedly made available without Tencent’s permission
60. Who owns your video game?: An issue between the NFTS and its students has raised questions about IP ownership — Sheridans’ Tim Davies is here to help
61. Pac-Man Owners Caught in Retro Game IP Maze
62. Bears Versus Yetis the Triple Town Copyright Infringement Case
63. Solid Oak Sketches, LLC v. 2K Games, Inc.
64. Copyright Defenses When a Copyright Infringement Claim Gets Under Your Skin
65. U.S. Patent no. 10,286,327: Multiplayer video game matchmaking system and methods

Jon