It’s really basic: ownership of the copyright in work a business pays for can often be critical for successful commercialization of that work. Unfortunately, the U.S. Copyright Act contains arcane provisions that will often produce a counterintuitive result – leaving full copyright ownership with the contractor. How could this possibly be?? Background: When copyrightable work…read more
Observers of Internet trends often pronounce that privacy is a fiction and that it is futile to try to reclaim it. Whether that perspective is correct or not does not matter when faced with a Complaint issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Facebook Complaint and Consent Order recently issued by the FTC provide…read more
FTC Action On September 29, 2011, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued an Order for Reebok International (RBK) to pay $25 million in refunds to consumers of its EasyTone and RunTone shoes (Reebok Toning Shoes), and permanently enjoined Reebok from making claims that such products are effective in strengthening muscles or that wearing such products…read more
On June 28, 2011, Governor Jerry Brown of California signed an amendment to the California tax code which would impose on large Internet retailers the obligation to collect sales tax (technically “use” tax – but for our purposes, it’s equivalent to sales tax) from California customers. Initially, Amazon took the battle to a new level…read more
It’s no secret that piracy of music and movies over the Internet is rampant and costs industry billions of dollars annually. Most people involved in this activity are not hardened criminals, and if asked, will probably admit that it is a technical violation of the law, but that it’s not really that illegal. You might…read more
On June 20, 2011, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), announced that it will begin to allow almost any term as a generic top-level domain name. For instance, banks could register “.bank”, law firms could register “.lawyers”, etc. The possibilities are endless. This is the most important change to the domain name…read more
On June 27, 2011, the Supreme Court struck down a California statute that prohibited the sale of violent computer games to children as a violation of free speech under the First Amendment. The law would have imposed a fine of $1,000 per incident for the sale of violent computer games to children under the age…read more
On June 2, 2011, YouTube announced that it would make available certain videos that are licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY license. A work made available under the Creative Commons license basically allows others to freely use the work in virtually any manner they select with the stipulation that they include attribution to the…read more
The general rule is that a defendant needs to have minimum contacts with a state in order to be sued in the courts of that state. Minimum contacts might be satisfied by doing a sufficient amount of business in a particular state. Additionally, even if there are not minimum contacts, but if harm occurs in…read more
A New York Times article on May 22nd brought into the daylight what might be hiding in those website Terms of Use that you regularly agree to. But first you should watch this South Park clip about a character that accepted Apple iTunes Terms of Use upon download and basically sold his soul. Well, ok,…read more
