DANIEL MAYOR—The recent high-value sales of digital art NFTs (non-fungible tokens) by Beeple, and, even more recently, of a self-portrait NFT made by Sophia the Robot, signals the digital token’s acceptance as an attractive new asset for tech-savvy creatives. But avant-garde digital artists are not the only early-adopters of this craze and organizations like the NBA have made […]
MAX BUDOWSKY—In March, a federal district court in New York issued a decision that promises to shake up copyright law in a big way. Solid Oak Sketches, LLC v. 2k Games, Inc., centered around five unique tattoos that appear on the skin of three basketball players, Kenyon Martin, Eric Bledsoe, and LeBron James. The court […]
JULIAN MEJIA-GOMEZ—In 2013, the Supreme Court held that Aereo, a New York startup that retransmitted cable television content over the internet, was engaging in conduct in violation of the Copyright Act. The Court held that Aereo was committing copyright infringement because it publicly transmitted copyrighted material (programming) over the internet, without the owner’s (broadcasting companies […]
BY KATHERINE BRENNAN — On September 26, 2014, the Estate of Jack Kirby and Marvel Characters, Inc. announced that the two parties had settled a longstanding legal dispute over Kirby’s rights to the characters that he created or co-created while working as a freelance artist for Marvel between 1958 and 1963. The parties announced the […]
BY ROSS CHAFFIN — Florida, meet trolls. In response to recent federal judicial intervention, and with the help of some obscure legal weapons, copyright trolls are now plying their dubious trade en masse in the courts of the Sunshine State. “Copyright trolls” are entities that purchase intellectual property rights to a wide variety of media, from computer […]
