Intellectual Property Legal Questions

The answer to your inquiry does not relate to the mold, but rather to the resulting product. Is the resulting product a utilitarian product? If so, is there a design patent or utility patent covering the product? If not, there may not be any enforcible rights.  Is the object decorative, as opposed to functional, e.g., a sculpture? If so, who desighed the object? If you did, the copyright in the object belongs to you, not the person who made the molds. As you can see, there are numerous questions that must be answered before an opinion can be given as to what you can do.  However, mere ownership of the molds would not give ownership of the rights in the resulting cast the same way that ownerhip of a blueprint of a building would not give rights in a building constructed using the blueprint.... Read More

i am sure you expected this answer: you need to speak with a "practical" trademark lawyer with experience in trademarks who knows how these matters ususally resolve. Perhaps hiring the attorney on a limited basis to see if you can arrange for concurrent use of the allegedly confusing mark would be of value.... Read More

A copyright protects the form of expression of a work, not the underlying content. For example, the blueprint of a building could not be photocopied without infringing the copyright, while use of the blueprint to build the building depicted would not be an infringement of the copyright. Thus, if you perform the actual steps described in a book, and then blog about what you did, unless you lifted text from the book and incorporated it into your blog, the mere fact that reading your blog's description of what you did would reveal the steps taught by the book would not be a violation of the copyright in the book. On the other hand, if by some chance the author had also obtained a patent on the process of getting a job in 10 days, that patent would be infringed by performing the process, not by writing about it.... Read More

Copyright protects the expression, not the content of a work.  Thus, if you use your own words to describe the content of a news article, you would not be infringing the copyright in the article.  There is no magic number of words strung together, and I could image the situation where infringment would occur even though every third word is different.  My advice to you would be to distill out just the bare facts contained in a news article, and then without looking at the article, write your own story describng the facts.... Read More

Nickolay, Is your project going to be sold or is for a work or government presentation? If it's not going to be sold, you should be okay. Be sure to give credit to Apple. It sound like you might be making your own illustration, and simply using the Apple map as the basis. That should make your use even more acceptable. Richard Koch... Read More

Without knowing the facts of the matter, a proper answer cannot be given. The burden is on the plaintiff to prove its case and if you truly did not do what you have been accused of doing, the plaintiff will be unable to prove its case and if you can establish that the plaintiff had no basis for filing of the lawsuit, the potential for you to have penalties assessed against the plaintiff would exist.... Read More

Not sure what you questions is. Yes she is infringing your copyright, but if you did not register the image within 90 days of first publication (in this case the first time someone left your shop with the image), you cannot get statutory damages or attorney's fees so the best you could do is get an injunction and monetary damages to the extent that such have resulted. She probably thinks that it is a "fair use" because it is for a fundraiser (presumably for a charity), but the monetary purpose should defeat such a defense.  If you haven't already, you should contact her/the charity and advise them of your rights and demand that they discontinue sales. Alternatively, you could require them to apply a copyright notice with your name as part of the notice and take a tax deduction for the value of a reasonable royalty that you have donated to the charity.... Read More

Before you send out cease on desist letters, you need to establish that you have some rights that have been violated. You should discuss the situation in detail with a local lawyer. For example, did you have a contract with these former employees that contained a non-compete clause? Did these employees copy any script that you created for these shows? Are the tracks original music created for you or music that is available from other sources. If the tracks were created for you, did you obtain the copyright in the music, and if so, did the former employees copy your tracks or independently reproduce them. These are only some of the questions that need to be answered before you send out a cease and desist letter to anyone, unless you want to find yourself on the wrong end of an unfair competition law suit. While it may seem unfair, it is possible that there is nothing you can do to stop these former employees if the answers to the above questions indicate that you have no enforceable rights in these shows.... Read More

Register the copyright in them with the United States Copyright Office. You will probably have to file a separate application for each film or sketch, but the filing fee is fairly minimal. You will have to upload a file for each film or sketch to the Copyright Office as a "deposit," but that file does not become publicly available. In fact, no one can get the file from the Copyright Office except in very limited situations. Go to www.copyright.gov and check out the FAQs. They are very helpful on how to register the copyright.... Read More

I would not recommend that you use any third party-owned copyrighted work in a commercial publication (one that you offer for sale and potentially make money on) - even if you do not believe that the legitimate copyright owner will not come after you.  Ideally, you should seek the owner's written permission to utilize the work in question.  Feel free to email me offline to further discuss this: ldunner@dunnerlaw.com Lisa... Read More

You did not provide enough information to provide any advice. Did they identify the work that you allegedly copied? If so, did you copy it and if you copied it, for what purpose? However, if you have been engated in the alleged illegal action, at a minimum you should immediately discontinued doing so and respond indicating that you have done so and agree not to resume such action. Such may be sufficient to placate the copyright owner without their instituting legally action to recover a small amount of money.... Read More

You are correct that if a work is in the public domain, anyone can copy or create their own derivative work based on it. However, you also must steer clear of other people's derivative works to avoid infringing THEIR rights. A good example is the current situation of Disney's remake of the Wizard of Oz titled, "Oz, the Great and Powerful." The Baum book is in the public domain but Warner Bros. still has copyright protection in its 1939 screenplay and film, and recently filed to register the trademark "The Great and Powerful Oz." Warner Bros. is known to enforce its rights in the Oz characters even though the underlying work is in the public domain. You can read more about this at http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/wizard-of-oz-disney-warner-bros-289305. You should consult someone about the details of your proposed work before you start writing.... Read More