Did the Joker Write the Ninth Circuit’s Batmobile Decision?
In DC Comics v. Towle, the Ninth Circuit recently upheld the district court’s summary judgment determination that the Batmobile, as it appeared in at least two very different iterations created more than twenty years apart, constitutes a single copyrighted “character.” No joke. The case involved Towle’s creating and selling Batmobile replicas, specifically the car used […]
A Happy Birthday to a New Public Domain Song
I originally wrote about Marya v. Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., the “Happy Birthday To You” case, in June 2013 when the case was originally filed in the Central District of California. Last week, Chief Judge George H. King, in a 43-page opinion, granted plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment in their declaratory judgment action, holding that the […]
Guest Blogger on NewMusicBox
I’m honored to have been asked to write a series of posts during September on music and copyright for NewMusicBox, the online magazine of NewMusic USA, an organization that supports creators, performers and presenters of “new music” (sometimes referred to as contemporary classical or experimental music, including jazz) by American composers. Although these posts will […]
No, You Don’t Own Your Arrangement of That Hit Song
[Note: A slightly edited version of this post has been published in Vol.35, No.9 of The Licensing Journal (Wolters Kluwer, October 2015)] A guitarist contacted me recently. He creates arrangements of popular songs and puts the PDFs of the music for sale on his website. The first thing I asked him is whether he got […]
What’s Next for ASCAP and BMI as SESAC Buys The Harry Fox Agency?
A lot of people are wondering what it means for the music industry since it was reported that the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), the leading trade organization for US music publishers, has sold its wholly-owned mechanical licensing subsidiary, The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA) to SESAC, Inc., the smallest of the three domestic music […]
Bieber, Usher and the Fourth Circuit Dancing About Architecture
On a certain level, the June 18 decision from the Fourth Circuit in Copeland v. Bieber is fairly routine, with only the click-bait of pop star defendants Justin Bieber and Usher setting the case apart from any other copyright infringement case involving music. However, since this is an appellate decision, unlike the jury verdict in […]