On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Thursday, June 11, 2015. Have you ever listened to film sound tracks and felt that certain portions of the music sounded familiar? You could be right. Studios may recycle film music, but they are required to make payments for the original sound track music. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), a labor organization representing about 80,000 professional musicians in the United States and Canada, is suing several Hollywood movie studios for recycling film music without making required payments. The AFM seeks to recover damages for breach of contract including payments for the benefit [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Thursday, May 21, 2015. Cable networks HBO and Showtime won a victory for antipiracy efforts on April 30, two days before the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. Anticipating certain websites would stream the fight for free, the fight was priced at $89 to $100 on pay-per-view, the cable companies sought a temporary restraining order (TRO) to enjoin websites from infringing their copyright of the coverage of the fight. Judge Wu granted their request, concluding that the threatened infringement would take away the cablers' right of first transmission and publication of a highly valuable live event, would [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. After several years of litigation, music streaming service Grooveshark will settle with major music labels rather than face hundreds of millions of dollars in statutory damages at trial. The service has agreed to wipe its servers of the record companies' music, and surrender ownership of its web site, apps, and intellectual property. Perhaps due to its unapologetic stance from day one, Grooveshark was unable to transition into a successful, legitimate service. When Universal Music Group sued Grooveshark for copyright infringement four years ago, UMG presented emails from Grooveshark's executives [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Thursday, May 14, 2015. Copyright infringement is no joke, as anyone who has tried to upload a video that contains un-licensed music to YouTube can attest. Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission or infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display, or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works. To legally sample a song, a musician should seek permission for any and all copyrighted works. That is, the musician needs to obtain consent from the [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Tuesday, May 12, 2015. Musicians have been sampling each others music for decades. In fact, some musicians make their living sampling from other music and creating new sounds. For example, the solo artist Girl Talk mixes elements of hip-hop and rock songs to make a completely new sound. Girl Talk's only member is engineer-turned-DJ Greg Gillis. Mr. Gillis has so far released five albums, which are offered for free on his website, and each sampling hundreds of songs. For each sample of a song he uses on his albums, Mr. Gillis has sought [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Thursday, April 23, 2015. You're updating your website and find a few nice photos on Google Images. No harm in downloading them and putting them on your website, right? Wrong. And a Washington, D.C. patent lawyer has just learned the hard way that using stock photos without permission can be costly. Masterfile Corp., a photo supplier, alleged that the lawyer illegally used two files of people dressed in suits on his website. The licensing company sought $150,000 in damages for using the photos without permission. The suit settled for a small sum. While [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Tuesday, April 21, 2015. A new case involving the intellectual property rights of the heirs of the composer of a popular television show may test the limits of who may sue for copyright infringement. In late March 2015, the children of Morton Stevens, the award-winning TV and film music composer who created the theme music for the show Hawaii Five-0, sued CBS for copyright infringement in federal court in Los Angeles. The original Hawaii Five-0 television show ran from 1968 to 1980. Mr. Stevens created an iconic theme song, and he created it [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Friday, March 13, 2015. As a small business owner you know full well that having an impressive website is vital for the success of your business. You elected to invest significant time and money to build the site or to employ a reputable web designer to separate your website from your competitors. You may have also chosen to hire a search engine optimization firm in hopes of obtaining a first page search engine ranking on Google or elsewhere in order to increase new customer income generated from internet acquisition. Now, how can you [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Wednesday, February 25, 2015. A copyright is a type of legal protection, under federal law, for authors of "original works of authorship," meaning literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and other intellectual works. A work need not be published to be protected - an experienced intellectual property attorney can explain this distinction in further detail. The law authorizes a copyright owner to do things such as reproduce his or her work; sell or rent it; or perform the work publicly (such as by releasing songs). Copyrights protect original works of authorship in a "fixed" tangible [...]