United States Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan is a fan of comics. If you had not already read that in her bio at SCOTUS-tracking blog Supreme Court Review, you might have inferred it from the Spiderman references she included in her Kimble v. Marvel (“Kimble“) decision. She even supported her final decision, declining to overturn the limits […]

Posted in Contracts, Infringement, IP, Patents, US
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Copyright ownership in Ellen Degeneres’ famous Oscar Twitter Selfie, which holds the record for most retweets, might be unclear, but for the average citizen sharing the picture, it doesn’t matter much. Canada’s fair dealing and the United States’ fair use exemptions cover the most common types of sharing and dissemination of the image.

Posted in Contracts, Copyright, Fair Dealing, Image, Internet, IP, MediaLaws, Movies, Social Media, Supreme Court of Canada, Technology, Telecommunications
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Dubious and likely illegal image scraping is alive and well. And outside of particularly public, harmful cases like Rehtaeh Parsons’ photo ending up on a dating site, few organizations or governments seem to be effectively coordinating to stop the practice.

Posted in Canada, Contracts, Copyright, copyright reform, Fair Dealing, Human Rights, Human Rights Issues, Identity Theft, Image, Internet, Personality Rights, Privacy, Regulatory Policy, Reputation Management, Social Justice, Social Media, Technology, UK, US
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In common law countries, the term of protection granted by copyright has been steadily growing ever since its advent in the eighteenth century, yet the benefits of these term extensions has been vigorously debated. A new study by Meghan McGarvie and Petra Mosner, however, provides evidence that payment to authors by London publishers significantly increased […]

Posted in Contracts, Copyright, copyright reform, Literary Works, UK, UK
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