U.S. Supreme Court Fixes Ninth Circuit’s Test for Mistakes in Copyright Registrations—Unicolors v. H&M (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa On February 24, the U.S. Supreme Court held 6-3 that the Ninth Circuit erred in invalidating a copyright registration for failure to comply with the Copyright Office’s “single unit of publication” regulation, where the copyright…
Another 512(f) Claim Fails–Moonbug v. Babybus
Moonbug runs the CoComelon channel, the top-ranked Kids YouTube channel. Babybus runs a competitive channel that Moonbug believes infringes its copyrights. An example: Moonbug submitted takedown notices to YouTube covering at least 70 videos and sued Babybus for copyright infringement….
Section 230 Doesn’t Apply to Publication of Private Emails–Crowley v. Faison
Faison runs the Sacramento chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM). She received several racist and offensive emails from an email address purporting to be Karra Crowley. Faison posted the emails to BLM’s Facebook page and identified Karra as the sender….
Trademark Registration of Political Messages for Expressive Merchandise–In re Elster (Guest Blog Post)
By guest blogger Lisa Ramsey, Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law Federal Circuit holds refusal to register a political message for T-shirts violates the First Amendment, but fails to acknowledge that these types of registrations can…
Fair Use Protects High School’s Use of Inspirational Meme–Bell v. Eagle Mountain School District
Bell published a short book in 1982. It contained a passage that has become a meme in the sports community. Bell has separately registered a copyright in the passage. Bell has filed at least 25 copyright lawsuits. This one has…
Copyright Office Rejects Registration for AI-Created Works
Thaler filed an application to register the copyright in this work, entitled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise”: Thaler explained the work “was autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine” and he was “seeking to register this computer-generated…
Section 230 Immunizes TikTok for User-Posted Videos–Day v. TikTok
Day discovered videos on TikTok of her 2-year-old daughter being abused. That’s horrifying, but the opinion doesn’t address the many obvious followup questions, such as: where was the daughter during the abuse? who was abusing the daughter? was that person…