Print is Dead. Long Live the Word. Britannica Stops the Presses. Welcome to the Henry Blake cliche festival. CNN Money reports that after 244 years the print edition of Britannica will no longer be offered. As many may recall, one study indicated the Wikipedia was more close to as accurate than Britannica. It may come [...]

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I feel like I’m scooping Jacqui here, since she’s the Madisonian Twilight expert, but I was so bothered by the recent district court decision in the Bella’s Jacket Brouhaha that I’m chiming in on the intersection of intellectual property and teen vampires.
Twilight is probably part of basic 21st century cultural literacy, so I’ll presume [...]

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Does anyone know anything about IP rights (or lack thereof) in the jigsaw puzzle industry?
My son has recently become enamored with 3D puzzles and is currently working on a world globe like this one.  So I was wondering if the jigsaw puzzle companies typically assert any IP rights in these creations.  Obviously images on puzzles [...]

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This morning as I was being ordered by my four year old to put on her Little Mermaid video, she explained to me:  ”Mommy, you don’t copy this DVD or you go in jail.”  I’d say the content industries’ message is getting through loud and clear.

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Further to Greg’s post on the Brown v EMA decision, I thought it might be worth mentioning, by contrast, the position in Australia where violent and sexually explicit video games have typically been banned from sale within the country.  The federal and state governments are now considering the introduction of an R18+ rating for these [...]

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The E.U. Parliament has just adopted a Directive that is intended to better protect consumer rights in relation to digital content.  The text of the Directive is available here.  There is also a summary by Natali Helberger here.

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While sitting through demonstrations of free online video games (presented by my 5 year old), I noticed some clear similarities between the Johnny Finder games and the Indiana Jones movies.  While the games are clearly not passing themselves off as being officially affiliated with Indiana Jones, there are characters and plot elements that are similar [...]

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Eva Gabrielsson, the girlfriend of the late Stieg Larsson (author of the popular Dragon Tattoo books) has just completed a memoir on her life with the author.  I was struck by the cover design of her book, at least the version to be released in the U.S.  It seems highly reminiscent of the cover designs [...]

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I have just finished reading John Tehranian’s new book, Infringement Nation:  Copyright 2.0 and You, which I mentioned in a previous post.
While there are a lot of books about digital copyright law already out there, this one is definitely worth a read as it tackles a number of issues differently – or with a [...]

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Before I officially leave my vampire literature kick, some folks may be interested in my latest attempt to consider moral rights through the perspective of some supernatural fiction authors (and not just Stephenie Meyer!).  This was a fun article looking at the extent to which some of the digital age ideas about moral rights protections [...]

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I was reading in Entertainment Weekly (yes, even IP profs have some downtime) about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s forthcoming comic book and cartoon series that he is working on with Stan Lee entitled “The Governator”.  Apparently, he thought the title was so cool when he first took office that he registered it as a TM with the [...]

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I’ve recently been reading Robin Barnes’ book, Outrageous Invasions, about rights of celebrities and public figures to protect their privacy and their reputations in the face of a free press.  The book again makes me think about the relationship between celebrities and the press and that old question about whether celebrities should be expected to [...]

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In recent years (and particularly since reading a lot of Bobbi Kwall’s work), I’ve been increasingly interested in motivations for why authors/artists create and in the relationship between economic incentives and creativity.  One of this year’s Oscar nominated documentaries (Exit Through the Gift Shop) is actually an interesting exploration of some of these issues.
It explores [...]

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I’ve been watching (and haven’t quite finished) the 2009 documentary, Tales from the Script, which I find very interesting from an IP point of view.  It’s basically a collection of interviews and interesting/frank war stories from Hollywood writers about their experiences preparing, selling, and working with producers and directors on scripts for movies and TV [...]

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Media studies experts have demonstrated that cheap copy drives local news “it bleeds/it leads” programming decisions. It’s a lot easier to send a reporter to a crime scene than it is to investigate local corruption. The same dynamic explains a surfeit of reality TV:
One of the things that I think is core [...]

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For all those cyberlaw/First Amendment profs following the “violent video games” case that arose recently in California, it was argued yesterday in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Podcasts and court documents are available here.  Judgment is expected sometime in the spring.  (And sadly Schwarzenegger is no longer the Gubernator…)

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Those of us with small children may have noticed the recently filed lawsuit by the second actress to voice Dora the Explorer in the popular children’s television show – Caitlin Sanchez.  Hollywood Reporter story here.  After 3 years on the show, Sanchez was “fired” (although that doesn’t seem to be the basis of the claim) [...]

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In case anyone missed it, yesterday the Librarian of Congress released the new exemptions from the DMCA’s access control protection measures.  The details are here.  Looks like some good news for some fair uses of DVD snippets.

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I have just finished reading Bobbi Kwall’s new book, The Soul of Creativity, which sets out a plan for ways in which the United States might revisit the idea of adopting a moral rights agenda, but perhaps in a more palatable way than has been suggested in the past – with significant deference to [...]

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I just came across a story by NPR’s Margot Adler from February, where she admits to being a vampire book fan and creates a list of her Top 75 vampire books.  Do those who follow vampire books agree with her list?  Apologies to those who hate Twilight because they seem to be at the top [...]

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