Manuel Noriega Loses Right of Publicity Suit Against Activision (Guest Blog Post)
By guest blogger Tyler Ochoa What does former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega have in common with former NFL running back Jim Brown and a host of former college athletes? All…
A Seismic Ruling On Pre-1972 Sound Recordings and State Copyright Law–Flo & Eddie v. Sirius XM Radio (Guest Blog Post)
By Tyler Ochoa [Eric’s intro: in Tyler’s cover email to me, he told me the ruling was “huge, as in 1906-San-Francisco-earthquake huge. It literally could result in undoing 75 years…
Urban Outfitters’ Kent State T-Shirt Was Offensive But Probably Legal (Guest Blog Post)
By Tyler Ochoa As reported in various news outlets (including MSN and New York magazine), Urban Outfitters generated a storm of controversy on Twitter a few days ago, when it…
More Intellectual Property Trivia Questions (The Outtakes)
…our IP trivia quiz from WIPIP. To prepare those trivia questions, my colleagues (Tyler Ochoa and Brian Love) and I made a list of potential questions and then picked our…
Rationalizing (?) the Hart and Keller v. EA Sports Publicity Rights Rulings (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa [Eric’s note: this is a long blog post from my colleague Tyler. It does a great job demonstrating that the interplay between the First Amendment…
Conference Announcement: A 15 Year Retrospective of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, SCU, March 15
…from the DMCA as we continue to build copyright policy in the digital millennium. We anticipate spending the morning on 1201 and the afternoon on 512. My colleague Tyler Ochoa…
How Long Does a Post-Mortem Right of Publicity Last?–Hebrew University v. GM (Guest Blog Post)
by Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa The right of publicity is a state-law right to use one’s identity for a commercial purpose. Thus, if you want to use a celebrity’s name…
Marilyn Monroe’s Image is Cast Into the Public Domain — Sort Of (Guest Blog Post)
by Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa [check out Prof. Ochoa’s casebook on publicity rights / affiliate link] In 2011, Marilyn Monroe was #3 on Forbes magazine’s annual list of top-earning dead…
Java APIs Aren’t Copyrightable–Oracle v. Google (Guest Blog Post)
By Tyler Ochoa (see some of Tyler’s other posts) with comments from Eric Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 3:10-cv-03561-WHA (N.D. Cal. May 31, 2012). On Thursday, Judge William Alsup…
Comments on the Golan v. Holder Supreme Court Ruling (Guest Blog Post)
By Tyler Ochoa In a decision that favored the 1% (copyright owners) over the 99% (consumers and the public domain), the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that neither the Patent…