Posts Tagged: "DMCA"

House IP Subcommittee Mulls Copyright and Design Patent Revisions Amid Right-to-Repair Debate

The House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet met today to hear from a number of witnesses about the intersection of intellectual property rights and consumers’ right to repair products they own. The concerns voiced by witnesses and congress members today centered around harm and cost to consumers as a result of technological protection measures (TPMs) and increased use of IP tools such as design patents to thwart competition for after-market parts.

Why the Supreme Court Should Weigh in on CMI Violations Under the DMCA

Real estate data firm CoStar and real estate digital marketplace CREXi are currently engaged in a high-profile intellectual property fight. Costar, which runs Apartments.com, alleges that CREXi is violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by using its images on Crexi.com without regard to its terms of service. The company has gone so far as to say that “CREXi is attempting to build its own online commercial real estate marketplace and auction platform by free-riding on CoStar’s billions of dollars of investments and the thirty-plus years of hard work by CoStar’s employees.” CrEXi, on the other hand, argues that all the images on the site are uploaded at brokers’ (not CrEXi’s) direction and thus the company can’t be held liable for IP violations. 

Combat Cyberbullying with Copyright Law

Recently, Netflix released a documentary titled, “The Most Hated Man on the Internet,” which is about anti-revenge porn activists and their efforts to take down the website, IsAnyoneUp.com. The site was founded by Hunter Moore and allowed anyone to anonymously upload nude photos with social media handles or to submit sexually explicit photos of others without their consent. The documentary follows Charlotte Laws, whose daughter’s photos were shared on the site, as she launches a campaign to shut it down.

Taking Control of the Game: How Sports Rights Owners are Fighting Piracy

On August 18, 2022, Albert Pujols hit a grand slam against Austin Gomber for his 690th career home run. A clip of that home run was posted on Reddit before the official Major League Baseball (MLB) app was updated. Three years ago, the post would have been taken down quickly. Today, it has thousands of fans commenting on it instead. In 2020, MLB reversed course on a long-established content policy by going beyond simply allowing fans to post clips and highlights of MLB games. They introduced Film Room, a product that lets fans search clips, make reels, and post them to social media. This decision was made with intent – to take back control over how its media was being used online. “I think we’re at the point now where we believe that making our content available for our fans, particularly our younger fans, in a way that’s easy for them to consume, is really important,” Chris Marinak, MLB’s chief operations and strategy officer told Sporting News.

California Court Holds Pinterest’s Display of User-Uploaded Works Near Ads are Protected by DMCA Safe Harbor

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California this week ruled that the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects Pinterest from a photographer’s claim that the platform infringed his copyrights by displaying his works alongside advertisements in the form of “promoted pins.” Harold Davis, an artist and professional photographer, claimed that Pinterest infringed 51 of his copyrighted works. In one example, Davis’ work, “Kiss from a Rose,” was displayed next to a promoted Pin for an art print called “White Tea Roses by Neicy Frey,” which Davis contended constituted unauthorized commercial use of his work.