The Licensing Plate

FTC: Skechers deceived consumers with shoe ads

Skechers USA Inc. will pay $40 million to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission that the footwear company made unfounded claims that its Shape-ups shoes would help people lose weight and strengthen their butt, leg and stomach muscles. Kardashian, Burke and other celebrities endorsed the shoes in Skechers ads.

AP (full article)

Village People Singer Victor Willis Breaks Silence About Copyright Lawsuit Win

Victor Willis, the songwriter and original lead singer of the Village People, isn’t done being a provocative figure in the music business. Fresh off a victory earlier this week in a battle to terminate his share of a copyright to the band’s hit songs, including “YMCA,” Willis has scored a second victory in an unresolved battle to cancel the music publisher’s trademark rights to “Village People.”

The Hollywood Reporter (full article)

Raskally fellows: Are copyright infringers “pirates” and “thieves”?

The habit of relying on metaphors such as “piracy” and “theft” to describe violations of copyright protections can elicit enraged reactions online—“it’s infringement, not theft!” is one common lament. True as that may be, using tough words in the copyright context is a centuries-old practice. Consider the following extracts from a 1704 essay by Daniel Defoe, known for his advocacy for authors’ rights long before Robinson Crusoe was published.

ars technica (full article)

CBS sues ABC, says new show copies “Big Brother”

CBS has sued rival ABC, accusing it of cloning its long-running U.S. summer series “Big Brother” with its new reality TV show, “The Glass House.”

Reuters (full article)

18 Olympians suing Samsung over Facebook app

Eighteen Olympians, including swimming greats Mark Spitz and Janet Evans, and diver Greg Louganis, have sued Samsung Corp. over a Facebook app they allege misuses their names and images.

According to the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, the athletes object to the Samsung Olympic Genome Project, which shows Facebook users how they are connected to famous Olympians.

EFF Calls Foul on Robo-Takedowns

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal judge Monday to reject arguments from Warner Brothers Entertainment claiming that the company’s automated scheme to send copyright infringement notices absolves it of responsibility for the system’s major flaws.

In this case, Warner is accused of sending thousands of takedown notices for content it did not own to a cyber-locker site called Hotfile. Hotfile asked for damages under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which holds copyright users accountable if they send takedown notices in bad faith. However, Warner insists that while it knew it was issuing some bad takedown requests with its semi-automated system, the errors should be excused by the court because a computer made the mistake – not a human. In an amicus brief filed Monday, EFF argues that Warner cannot wash its hands of its responsibility for the improper removal of content from Hotfile’s servers.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (full article)

Cybersquatting Cases Reached New Record In 2011, WIPO Reports

The number of cybersquatting cases filed with the arbitration body of the World Intellectual Property Organization reached a record high in 2011 with 2,764 cases filed by trademark owners, the UN agency reported today. WIPO also expressed alarm over the potential impact on cybersquatting of a move underway to add more generic domain names to the internet.

WIPO said last year’s number of cases was an increase of 2.5 per cent and 9.4 per cent from 2010 and 2009 numbers, respectively. “The expanding international reach of the Internet is reflected in the diversity of the domain name disputes filed with the WIPO Center in 2011,” it said in a release.

The WIPO panels that worked on the cases found evidence of cybersquatting, which refers to the act of registering names in bad faith, in 88 per cent of the cases filed last year.

The top five areas with the most number of complaints were retail, internet and information technology, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, fashion and banking and finance. WIPO said the cases for last year included many well-known names in business and public interest sectors.

Intellectual Property Watch (full article)

Navajo Nation sues Urban Outfitters for trademark infringement

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in a district court in New Mexico, alleges trademark violations and violations of the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which makes it illegal to sell arts or crafts in a way that falsely suggests they were produced by Native Americans.

The Guardian (full story)

Copyright kings are judge, jury and executioner on YouTube

On Friday, a YouTube user named eeplox posted a question to the support forums, regarding a copyright complaint on one of his videos. YouTube’s automated Content ID system flagged a video of him foraging a salad in a field, claiming the background music matched a composition licensed by Rumblefish, a music licensing firm in Portland, Oregon.

The only problem? There is no music in the video; only bird calls and other sounds of nature.

ars technica (full article)

Music rights agency Merlin wins illegal file sharing battle with LimeWire

Merlin, the rights agency for independent record labels representing acts including Adele and Arctic Monkeys, has reached a landmark deal with LimeWire worth millions of dollars to artists to end a long-running legal battle over illegal file sharing.

The Guardian (full article)

Judges Say No To Crack, Refuse ‘Crackberry’ Trademark

Embattled BlackBerry maker Research In Motion got a rare bit of good news this week after judges refused to let a gadget site trademark the name “Crackberry.”

The ruling came after RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) asked the Trademark and Trial Appeal Board to refuse Crackberry’s request for a trademark covering clothes and internet services.

paidContent.org (full article)

Artist alleges mural drove aesthetics of music video

Artist Maya Hayuk of Brooklyn filed a complaint against RCA Records and Sony Music alleging that several aspects of her mural “Sunshine” were incorporated into the music video for “I Only Wanna Give It To You” by Elle Varner.

The Legal Satyricon (full article)

France: All your books are belong to us

If the phrase “digital pirate” conjures up a lone socially challenged male with a large collection of Manga comics and Cory Doctorow ravings, think again. Some of the biggest “pirates” in the world are nation states.

Last week France passed a law that permits the state to seize authors’ rights on books published before 2001.

The Register (full article)

Pin with Caution, Says Lawyer Who Deleted All Her Pinterest Posts

Kirsten Kowalski, a Georgia attorney and photographer, detailed her decision on her photography blog, DDK Portraits. According to her post, Pinterest’s terms of use agreement states that users are responsible for member content they make available, and either accordingly own the content or have consent from the items’ owners.

ABA Journal (full article)

Adam Lambert Legal Settlement Allows Pre-’American Idol’ Album to Come Out

Adam Lambert has officially put an end to a dispute with Colwel Platinum Entertainment over a deal the singer made before he starred on the eighth season of American Idol.

Hollywood Reporter (full story)

Regarding Bella’s Jacket

…Trademark law today very often involves parties that don’t produce goods licensing their marks for use by parties that do produce goods.  So Pixar might license a toy maker to make toys for it.  If an unlicensed entity were to make a toy bearing the Pixar brand and a customer were to buy that toy due to Pixar’s reputation for quality, the consumer could be harmed if the unlicensed good had inferior qualities to those that Pixar would guarantee.

That’s not the case here…

madisonian.net (full article)

‘Cowboys & Aliens’ Comic Book Author Sues Universal for Copyright Infringement

Cowboys & Aliens keeps causing headaches for Universal Pictures. The Jon Favreau-directed summer sci-fi western disappointed at the box office, grossing just $175 million worldwide despite costing about that much to produce. Now the studio has been hit with a lawsuit by a comic book artist who claims the movie infringes his 1995 story, also called Cowboys & Aliens.

The Hollywood Reporter (full story)

Fight for your right to party rip DVDs legally

Since the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, the Copyright Office has held several triennial proceedings on bypassing digital locks. Gradually, the Office has loosened up; the last time around, it approved jailbreaking smartphones and granted a broad video exemption to educators and mashup-makers.

But a widespread exemption for cracking the CSS encryption on DVDs has always been a bridge too far.

ars technica (full article)

Trademark wars heat up. Be ready.

A trademark can be a company’s greatest asset. It can also be one of its biggest challenges — especially lately.

Some 3,652 trademark cases were filed in U.S. courts in 2010, up 8% over the previous year, according to FTI Consulting’s latest figures. That’s the biggest percentage increase in the last 10 years.

CNN (full article)

Glee Club TV Competition Shows in Copyright Infringement Dispute

What Fox’s “Glee” has wrought: Dutch broadcaster NCRV, the creator of “The Singing Office,” has accused the Canadian producer of “Canada Sings” ripping off its series’ format after selling the worldwide rights to Endemol.

The Hollywood Reporter (full article)