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…

Q3 2011 Quick Links, Part 1 (Copyright Edition)

By Eric Goldman * The Golan v. Holder SCOTUS oral arguments are today. My colleague Tyler Ochoa has been actively monitoring the case: – his essay previewing the case and…

Copyright Take-Backs? Supreme Court Grants Cert in Golan v. Holder

…into the public domain. Tyler Ochoa has blogged in detail about an earlier ruling on this blog, covering the copyright and First Amendment challenges the Act faced. Tyler Hart also…