Posts Tagged: "Barack Obama"

As Biden Presidency Nears, Concerns Over Return to Obama-Era IP Politics Loom Large

As of the time of publication, the Associated Press had called 264 electoral college votes for Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential Election. While many states are still counting and legal challenges have been filed by the Trump Administration in several of them, all signs indicate that Biden will likely be inaugurated President on January 20, 2021.What this means for IP will take months to parse. It is no understatement to point out that concrete details on IP policy are lacking on Joe Biden’s presidential platform. A site-specific search for intellectual property (e.g., “intellectual property” site:joebiden.com) returns only seven results on Google Search, the top two of which are links to the Limited License and Terms and Conditions pages for Biden. Similar results occur when running site-specific searches for “copyright” and “trademark” instead of “intellectual property.” Without question, the Biden campaign cares about protecting its own IP.

Steve Brachmann

November 5, 2020

The Changing Landscape of Copyrights: Hope Shifts from Photographers to Users

Copyrights protect original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. When photographers take pictures of individuals, there are substantial questions regarding the elements that should be attributed to the photographer’s creativity so that the work has the requisite originality for protection. Typically, the photographer’s choices regarding composition, lighting, focus, depth of field, and filtering, among many other elements, provide a sufficient basis to extend copyright protection to almost any photograph. Thus, when artists reproduce or use a photographer’s image in their pieces without permission, the photographer has a legitimate basis to complain.

Lee Burgunder

October 15, 2019