Tag Archives: preemption

Picture yourself at dusk along the river, walking through a massive outdoor art installation featuring tens of thousands of individually-placed spheres of light on short stalks, reminiscent of blooming flowers. Ok, now stop and answer this: what kind of intellectual property would you use to protect this installation?  If you answered “trade dress,” you get a frowny-face sticker, at least according to the Eighth Circuit’s recent opinion in Munro v.… More

When we published our Sue-per Bowl post, 2015 looked like it would be a good year for right of publicity claims brought by athletes. On January 6, 2015, the Ninth Circuit in Davis v. Electronic Arts held that the First Amendment did not compel dismissal of right of publicity claims brought by former NFL stars who appeared in the “historic teams” option of the Madden NFL computer game.… More

Last week, Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York issued his opinion Fox News v. TVEyes. Fox News claimed that TVEyes’ media monitoring service was copyright infringement. TVEyes argued that it was fair use. Here is our summary version of the case:

What is TVEyes?

TVEyes is a media-monitoring service that records content from over 1,400 TV and radio news outlets,… More

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently reaffirmed the rule that state law claims based on copyright are preempted by the preemption provisions of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 301. In Curtis v. Herb Chambers I-95, Inc., 458 Mass. 674 (2011), Curtis, an individual who had produced advertising materials for car dealerships, filed a complaint against car dealerships and a printing and distribution business to protect his advertisement design.… More