Intellectual Property News and Reports

Held: The term “full costs” in §505 of the Copyright Act means the costs specified in the general costs statute codified at §§1821 and 1920. Pp. 3–12. (a) Sections 1821 and 1920 define what the term “costs” encompasses in subject-specific... Read more →

Held: Registration occurs, and a copyright claimant may commence an infringement suit, when the Copyright Office registers a copyright. Upon registration of the copyright, however, a copyright owner can recover for infringement that occurred both before and after registration. Pp.... Read more →

When Robert Smith (aka Bigg Robb) recorded his song Looking for a Country Girl, he probably was not looking for a legal battle, too. But Bernard Thomas (aka Bishop Bullwinkle) copied the beat from Smith’s song to make a new... Read more →

Defendant ReDigi, Inc. and its founders, Defendants Larry Rudolph and John Ossenmacher,1 8 appeal from the judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Richard J. Sullivan, J.) in favor of Plaintiffs, Capitol Records,... Read more →

Richard Bell brought a copyright infringement lawsuit against Vacuforce, LLC, accusing it of publishing his photograph of the Indianapolis skyline on its website without a license. Vacuforce hired attorney Paul Overhauser to defend it. The parties quickly settled, so the... Read more →

(“[I]n copyright cases the discovery rule is a common‐law gloss.”). And, contrary to what Defendants argue, we have never held that mere registration, without more, is enough to put a reasonably diligent copyright owner on notice of an adverse claim.... Read more →

This appeal requires us to decide whether the district court misinterpreted our mandate in an earlier appeal and misapplied the defense of fair use, 17 U.S.C. § 107, in a dispute between three academic publishers and Georgia State University about... Read more →

Today, we are presented with the question of whether the annotations contained in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA), authored by the Georgia General Assembly and made an inextricable part of the official codification of Georgia’s laws, may be... Read more →

The panel vacated in part the district court’s judgment after a jury trial in favor of the defendants and remanded for a new trial in a copyright infringement suit alleging that Led Zeppelin copied “Stairway to Heaven” from the song... Read more →

This case concerns the rates paid by webcasters to license copyrights in digital sound recordings. Webcasters stream digital sound recordings to listeners over the Internet. A so-called “noninteractive” webcasting service chooses the recordings to play for listeners, whereas an “interactive”... Read more →