By Sharmil McKee on January 10, 2010
Marvel is suing the Jack Kirby estate to keep its copyright licenses.
Jack Kirby is best known for creating, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk, and co-creating Spider-Man. The Kirby estate sent notices to Marvel that its rights to use Kirby’s characters terminate in 2014. Basically, in 2014, the rights to use and copy Kirby’s characters [...]
Posted in Headlines, Intellectual Property, Litigation | Tagged celebrity, copyright
By Sharmil McKee on September 23, 2009
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Judge-Dismisses/7199
Thompson Reuter, Inc. (a very large software company) sued a university for copyright infringement and breach of license agreement. George Mason University, (a small innovative, entrepreneurial institution) who had a license agreement with Thompson, created a free software tool (Zotero). Thompson claimed that Zotero reversed engineered its EndNote citation software, which is a breach of [...]
Posted in Asked and Answered, Intellectual Property | Tagged copyright, reverse engineering
By Sharmil McKee on September 19, 2008
I received the following question by email:
What is legality of selling high school apparel, does consent need to be obtained, or royalties need to be paid?
This is my answer:
Your question is tough to answer because I need more information. You are asking about copyrights and trademarks. A high school logo or mascot is a copyright [...]
Posted in Asked and Answered, Intellectual Property | Tagged copyright, logo
By Sharmil McKee on December 9, 2006
The answer depends. Is the layout design of a website protected by copyright laws? This is the question the judge in Sartor v. Walters, 2006 WL 3497856 (W.D. LA.) is facing.
A few years ago, a federal court ruled that the distinctive layout of a magazine cover is entitled to copyright protection as a graphic work. [...]
Posted in Asked and Answered, Intellectual Property | Tagged copyright, domain name, Litigation, website
