Posts Tagged ‘copyright’

In earlier posts we have written about the continuing battle between file sharing members of the public and the record and film industries, covering their attempts to discouraging infringement through legal action, and digital rights management technology.  We have also reported on the seizure of domain names pointing to websites that encourage infringement.  Despite these [...]

Last week nine websites that allowed people to download or stream TV programmes and films for free were closed down (see here), their domains seized by the US federal government.  These sites included tvshack.net, Movies-Links.tv, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.coms along with five others. These sites were  targeted as part of a new initiative, aimed at combating Internet [...]

Should fan fiction be permitted by copyright law?  Roland Barthes, a literary theorist set out in his essay ‘Death of the Author’ his belief that once a text has been written by an author it no longer belongs to them, but to those who read it.  As he puts it: “to give a text an [...]

Amidst opposition within Parliament, considerable protest from thousands, and condemnation from some of the most respected companies in the world, the Digital Economy Bill was made law last week, becoming the Digital Economy Act. Concerns surrounding the potential impact of the new legislation are numerous and varied, but the most controversial aspect of the Act [...]

World Intellectual Property Day is an annual occasion held on the 26th of April, the anniversary marking the date on which the Convention establishing the Word Intellectual Property Organisation came into force in 1970. The objective of the day is fourfold: to spread awareness of the relevance of intellectual property (IP); to demonstrate the way [...]

You may have read about  the High Court ruling that Portsmouth FC must submit a statement of affairs next week, in advance of a hearing of the case brought by HMRC for winding-up the organisation.  This is the latest, and possibly the last, chapter in the club’s recent story of financial hardship, but an earlier [...]

What do I do if I think that someone has infringed my copyright on the internet by posting my content on their website? The first question to ask is where is the infringing website located? Is it a ‘.com’ or another local extension. For infringing websites based in the US the Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 and other legislation will apply.

The House of Lords’ decision yesterday that Matthew Fisher’s 38 year delay in claiming a share of copyright royalties should not prevent him claiming future royalties has been widely reported.  See, for example the IPkat here. It is interesting therefore to focus here on how joint copyright arises, and how it came about that Fisher’s [...]

I attended a talk recently which was advocating book writing as a way to promote ones personal brand.  Then the speaker said:  “Some people are reluctant to write about their area of expertise because they fear they might be giving away too much information.  However, they have no need to fear this because they have [...]

We often receive enquiries from clients wanting to register their logos.  Few know what registration they want or what protection is available, so it seems worth looking at this question in this blog. Before explaining what legal methods are available to protect logos here are a few examples of the different types of logos that [...]