US tech incubator, Rearden LLC, has been engaged in a drawn-out battle over its facial motion-capture technology, MOVA Contour. The disputed software was used to create the famous faces of…
Category: Ownership
Legal Battle Over Monkey’s Selfie Leads to Settlement
Recently British photographer David Slater came to a settlement with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in a lawsuit over who owns the copyright to a selfie taken…
Algorithmic Accountability: Prof. Frank Pasquale’s Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence in the Law
Algorithms are everywhere. Applied to systems like personal assistants, financial exchanges, and self-driving cars, computers now permeate almost every aspect of modern life. But how far should this algorithmic revolution…
No Laughing Matter: Copyright Protection for Jokes
Some people just can’t take a joke. Other people have taken jokes, and it has landed them in court. Two recent American copyright cases offer an opportunity to look at…
Is This What it Sounds Like when Doves Cry: The PRINCE Act and Canadian Privacy Law
The once proposed PRINCE Act [the Act] has now been set aside after being rushed through the Minnesota state senate. The Act sought to create a new property right in…
Batmobile Declared a Character Deserving of Copyright Protection, Finally Invincible
The U.S. Ninth Circuit court held in DC Comics v Towle (“Towle”) that Mark Towle’s Batmobile replicas infringed DC Comics’ copyrights, and that the Batmobile was a “character” deserving of copyright protection. (more…)