Do memes violate copyright law?
Who owns a meme—those pictures, videos and ideas that go viral on the internet?
In the case of the Socially Awkward Penguin, the answer might be National Geographic, since a staff photographer took the original penguin picture. Around 2009, internet users got hold of that photo, changed the background, added text and made it an internet phenomenon.
My Intellectual Property Licensor is Bankrupt – Now What?
Bankruptcy presents risks for, among many others, intellectual property (“IP”) licensees. Fortunately, there is a provision in the federal bankruptcy law that is designed to protect IP licensees when a licensor becomes insolvent.
The Intellectual Property Licenses in Bankruptcy Act was passed in 1988. It was added to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code as Section 365(n). Before the addition of Section 365(n), when an IP licensor went bankrupt, it could reject its IP licensing agreements and withdraw the authorizations it had previously granted to use its IP. This caused substantial harm to licensees’ businesses when they were structured around licensed IP.
New bar association focuses on US Patent Office’s PTAB
A new bar association for lawyers who do work in front of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent and Trial Appeal Board was announced Friday.
Increasingly, disputes involving the validity of patents are heard by the PTAB, according to a press release. The PTAB Bar Association, which has 45 law firms as founding members, hopes it will be forum for communications between lawyers, PTAB officials and administrative patent judges.
Startup seeks to bring bail bond process online
When Sandra Bland died in a Texas jail cell in 2015, Galen Weber got to thinking about bail.
Bland was being held on $5,000 bail. Her family and friends might have been able to raise it, but she was hundreds of miles away from her home in Illinois. Three days after being taken into custody, Bland died in an apparent suicide.
Weber is from New York, where bond agents require in-person payment, according to Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites. That’s inefficient, says Weber, a former data analyst for the Federal Reserve.