Posts in Entertainment Law

Entities owning the copyrights to music created by the late pop star Prince had filed suit against Roc Nation, the entertainment company owned by rapper Jay Z, which is affiliated with the streaming music service Tidal. Plaintiffs NPG Records and NPG Music Publishing allege that Tidal and Roc Nation have engaged in copyright infringement by adding a series of 15 unauthorized Prince albums to the Tidal catalog this June. The case is filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.

In late November, the Las Vegas NHL hockey franchise, which will begin playing with the National Hockey League (NHL) in the 2017-18 season, announced that it would be known as the Golden Knights. On December 7th, however, an office action issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office indicated that the USPTO had refused registration of U.S. Trademark Application No. 87147239, which would have protected the use of the standard character mark of “VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS” on entertainment services, specifically professional ice hockey exhibitions.

On November 1st, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (8th Cir.) issued a decision in a case brought by motion picture entertainment company Warner Bros. and appealed by a group of defendants who licensed images culled from publicity material for some of Warner’s most famous entertainment properties. A panel from the 8th Cir. found in favor of Warner Bros. and affirmed an earlier verdict, which has helped to define whether publicity material for films and animated shows are available in the public domain. This decision is the second time that 8th Cir. has issued a judgment in this case.

The Federal Circuit recently issued a non-precedential decision in a patent infringement action involving American pop music stars Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears and their production companies. The Federal Circuit’s decision vacated an earlier award of attorneys’ fees to Timberlake, Spears and the other defendants based on a finding that the case was exceptional within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. 285. The per curiam decision from the panel made up of Judges Moore, Linn and O’Malley explained that certain of the factors relied upon by the district court to find this case to be exceptional were entitled to no weight under § 285. Thus, the attorneys’ fee order of the district court was vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings.

Although the studio construction itself seems to be carrying on apace, Valhalla Studios has gotten itself into legal trouble over its chosen name. On October 19th, the studio was named as a defendant in a trademark infringement suit filed by Valhalla Motion Pictures, a California video production company, which is best known for developing and producing the hit television show The Walking Dead. The trademark infringement suit is filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (N.D. Ga.).

Kanye West, ran into some legal trouble when he was sued for trademark infringement by Michael Medina for using the word “Loisaidas” in the title. Medina began using the name “Loisaidas” in 2008 to refer to a Latin band that he had formed. The band originated from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, for which the name came from, as “Loisaidas” is a Spanish slang term for “lower east siders.” … However, the title “Loisaidas” was not found to be explicitly misleading such to induce members of the public to believe the “work” was either created by or about Medina’s music group. In October 2016, Medina appealed the case to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

On Monday, September 12th, Sid Bernstein LLC, a company representing Bernstein who passed away in 2013, filed a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement on the use of the Shea Stadium footage in the recent documentary. The suit charges that Sid Bernstein is the sole owner of the Shea Stadium master tapes by virtue of being a producer of the concert event and the employer for hire of the Beatles. The infringement suit targets both Apple Corps, the multimedia corporation set up by members of the Beatles in 1968 and involved with producing the new documentary, and Subafilms Ltd. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.).

On Tuesday, August 9th, Ed Sheeran was named as a defendant in a copyright lawsuit filed by three heirs of American singer-songwriter Lee Townsend. Townsend, who passed away in 2003, was Marvin Gaye’s co-writer for his famous song “Let’s Get It On.” The suit, which also lists among the defendants Warner Music Group, Atlantic Records UK, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Amy Wadge, Sheeran’s co-writer on “Thinking Out Loud,” alleges that the song “copied the heart” of “Let’s Get It On” and repeated copyright infringing melodic, harmonic and rhythmic compositions throughout the song. The case, Griffin et al v. Sheeran et al, has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.).

With the deaths of Prince and David Bowie earlier in the year, the process by which celebrity estates monetize the images and other intellectual property (IP) of the dearly departed has come into greater focus. How will they handle the onslaught of business from rights to their images and other non-musical IP? Unlike recordings and music publishing, which are covered by national law, individual states determine rights of publicity. Specifically, copyrights are federal and can be inherited by heirs such as in the Marvin Gaye case.

On June 30th, Judge George King of the Central District of California entered the Final Order and Judgment in the matter of Good Morning to You Productions Corp. et al. v. Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. – the “Happy Birthday” class action. Only the amount of attorneys’ fees to be awarded to the plaintiffs’ attorneys remains, and must be decided for many of the settlement terms to become effective. Nonetheless, it is not too early to consider what, if any, effects this case will have on the field of intellectual property.

The premise is simple. Turn on the radio this weekend and many, if not most, radio stations will be counting down the top songs of all time in their particular genre…. When Gene interviewed me in November 2015 we did talk about music and he tells me I’ve given him a hard time about his own top 25 songs since, which he published during the 4th of July weekend 2015. I don’t remember giving him a hard time, and if I did, well, I apologize. Although looking at his list I probably should have! In any event, I’m pleased to participate in what I understand will become a yearly endeavor with different IP professionals asked to provide their own top 25 each 4th of July weekend.

I think the long-term benefits to authors are greater than the downsides or the risks. But, like any time there’s a shakeup of an industry, there are short-term and long-term winners and losers. I’ll even use the term “digital disruption,” although it is way overused these days (and too often used as a poor excuse for infringing copyright). Digital technology is disrupting the industry as a whole. We had the same business models for the better part of at least a century, and while things are starting to change, we’re still largely operating as we did in the past, based on old business models with just a few tweaks. We haven’t fully evolved yet, and as a result we’re mostly seeing a little bit of the downside. Whenever there’s a disruption in business models, someone is negatively affected. Unfortunately, here it is the authors, and creators generally. And that’s because creators in these industries tend to have the least bargaining power and they tend to be a line item in a budget where there is some discretion.

The United States Copyright Office and George Mason University School of Law announced last Friday that they have formed an academic partnership, working through Mason Law’s recently-launched Arts & Entertainment Advocacy Clinic, directed by Professor Sandra Aistars.

Critics argue that intellectual property is bad for innovation in part because it allows for “monopolies” that prevent the public from using certain creations without permission for a period of time. As a preliminary matter, the use of the misleading scare-term “monopolies” to describe property rights in inventive and creative labor is clearly an attempt to skew the debate from the outset. After all, you wouldn’t call property rights in hard-copy creations, like the crops a farmer harvested, “monopolies” in those creations. Furthermore, if public access is the concern, a system that fails to provide inventors and creators the economic freedom to create things to market to the public in the first place will be far more harmful than a system that secures justly-earned property rights in inventors’ and artists’ productive labors.

In February 2007, Stephanie Lenz uploaded a 29-second video of her son dancing in her kitchen to the Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy” to YouTube. Universal Music Group, Prince’s publishing administrator responsible for enforcing his copyrights, objected to the otherwise-innocuous video, and sent YouTube a warning to remove the video, claiming that it constituted copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Stephanie Lenz sued, arguing that Universal’s takedown request targeted permissible fair use, which generally permits the use of copyrighted material in limited conditions, such as when used in connection with criticism, parody, commentary or news reporting.