Email gets a bad rap these days for a lot of reasons. It’s permanent (i.e. not self-destructing like Snapchat), it’s not a good mobile communication solution, it takes too much time, there’s too much of it, it’s rife with spam, and so on and so forth. But I actually love email for a lot of those reasons (not the spam stuff, obviously). To me, these aren’t bugs, they’re features; they’re exactly what makes email a useful business
Read MoreThere’s a difference between a dispassionate telling of the facts, and a heated accusation of wrongdoing. The more your remarks hew towards the latter, the more likely you veer into defamation territory, which robs you of the high road and puts you in danger of getting sued yourself. The last thing you want, as a victim of copyright infringement or breach of contract, is to defend yourself against a defamation claim. And the more prominent they are, the less likely they are to feel bad for suing you. After all, they have a bottom line to maintain, don’t they?
Read MoreSurely you’ve heard by now the story of the troubled fan film, Star Trek: Axanar. The film, which had earned over a million dollars from backers on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, was sued by Paramount for violating “innumerable copyrighted elements of Star Trek, including its settings, characters, species, and themes." While Star Trek fan films have been around forever (I was a Trekkie as a kid and remember seeing them a lot at meetings and conventions), Paramount was concerned about Axanar’s size and scale - high quality visual effects, name actors, feature-length runtime, etc. I guess they were concerned that a film of sufficient quality could impact not only the release of Star Trek Beyond, but its future slate of Trek films and spinoffs.
Read MoreIf you’re a single person wearing a Batman costume to San Diego Comic-Con, your use is almost certainly non-commercial and you are not liable for copyright infringement. But if you’re a business who specializes in making these costumes, the question becomes a bit more problematic. On its face, it’s easy to assume that it would constitute infringement. After all, DC Comics owns the character of Batman and his general look. If you were to visit your average costume shop looking for a Batman cowl to wear at Halloween, every single one of them would have “officially licensed product” printed on a tag somewhere. No costume designer wants to tempt fate by producing unlicensed Batman merch even if they could get away with it. That’s the smart move.
Read MoreWhen was the last time you read a contract all the way through? Go on, take a few minutes and really think about it. I bet for most of you, the answer is somewhere between “a long time ago” and “never,” even for those of you who deal with contracts regularly. And you know what? I don’t blame you because most contracts are too long. Nearly every contract I've seen in the last few years has suffered from this problem - page after page of dense legal text. And the result of these overlong legal documents is that people don't read them and fully understand the transaction they're involved in. I know this because many of my clients admit it to me.
Read MoreThe truth is, the law is rarely cut and dried. All laws have exemptions and immunities. Sometimes new laws come into being and replace old laws and no one really knows how they will apply. Sometimes old laws fall out of practice but never come off the books, waiting for creative attorneys to bring them back into the fold. Some laws that seem well-settled can become unsettled if the political landscape changes or unforeseen situations arise that allow for new interpretations of the law. And even where the law is settled and in no danger of becoming unsettled, no two cases are ever exactly alike, so the principles that apply in one case make not apply in another, even if they look similar to a casual observer.
Read MoreIn order to be granted trademark registration by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the mark you’re seeking to protect must be distinctive. The more generic or common your mark is, the less likely it is to be granted protection. The USPTO reviews proposed marks on a sliding scale of descriptiveness in order to determine whether they should approve registration.
Read MoreNormally I don’t recommend threatening the other party. If you don’t have the leverage to follow through on the threat it could backfire. But in this case, Wright (who is also a producer and director on the show) had two things going for her that made the tactic pay off. First, she knew she had the upper hand. She was too popular to simply replace with another actor and the bad blood resulting in her leaving the show and publicly bashing her former employer could’ve seriously impacted the show’s cache with its viewer base, maybe even killing it.
Read More“Why didn’t Prince leave a will?” everyone and their mothers seemed to be asking. It’s a reasonable question, but because the subject was Prince, it appeared that people were looking for an answer that was unique or even supernatural. The truth is, we’ll never know why Prince didn’t have a will. I’m not a trust and estates attorney, but even if I was, it wouldn’t matter, because I don’t think the answer is all that extraordinary.
Read MoreHow you reference an existing brand will dictate whether you become liable for trademark infringement or public disparagement of the brand, but there are carve-outs in trademark law that allow you to fairly reference an existing trademark without being liable for infringement. Yes you heard me right; trademark fair use exists!
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