Legal News Articles - Intellectual Property

Hamburg, Germany: A German court recently ruled that Google is responsible for any potential copyright conflicts that may occur from videos uploaded to YouTube by users.

Las Vegas, NV: A copyright infringement lawsuit is casting a pall over the casual blogging industry after an online blogger was served for allowing a visitor to post a newspaper report in its entirety, without his knowledge, on his blog. The blogger was not given the opportunity to pull the offending article from his blog in advance of the lawsuit.

Frankfort, KY: Conservative Senatorial candidate Rand Paul is making copyright infringement news after the Canadian rock band Rush sent a cease and desist letter to the politician's office asking him to stop using their song "Tom Sawyer" in his fundraising videos.

Beverly Hills, CA: In the latest copyright infringement news coming out of California, Playlist.com, a social media service formerly known as Project Playlist has reached a settlement with Universal Music Group over a lawsuit first filed in 2008.

New York, NY: Never irritate an artist, unless you want to get sued. Some of the most successful photographers, visual artists, writers, cartoonists and web designers say that Google is copying and distributing their work without permission. A class action lawsuit filed on behalf of hundreds of artists against Google amounts to the single largest copyright infringement case in history.

Waterloo, ON: As technology continues to evolve at a breathless pace, patent infringement claims and lawsuits have become a fairly normal occurrence. Consequently, two new patent infringement cases against Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM), a Canadian company, appear not to be rattling investors in the least. In fact, the Canadian Press (CP) reported on 2/19/10 that there are "probably" about four or five different lawsuits against RIM at any given time.

Boston, MA: Elisabeth Hasselbeck, co-host of the popular television show "The View" and author of a newly released book about living with Celiac's disease, has been accused by a Massachusetts woman of plagiarism and copyright infringement.

Birmingham, AL: Professional photographer Rob Fleming thinks no one should get a second run at his work without paying. As such, he recently instructed attorney Jamie Moncus to file a willful copyright infringement suit against CVS/pharmacy for allowing people to duplicate his work. "There are statutory damages available for infringement which can be pretty hefty and they are per act of infringement," says Moncus. "We have also asked for injunctive relief to retain their employees so this doesn't continue."

Toronto, ON: The latest word on copyright infringement casts a hypocritical glow over the recording industry, which has been going after individual file shares (people who download music off the internet for free). The same industry that sued a the single mother for millions in restitution for infringement is now being sued itself—for copyright infringement.

Baltimore, MD: Copyright infringement has morphed in recent years from focusing on violations to the authorship of text and even ideas, to the protection of all things intellectual and the ownership of one's intellectual property. The explosion of the Internet—and more specifically mobile communication—tethered with the creation of applications, has put an even greater importance on the policing of intellectual property.