In the age of the internet, music videos have persisted on MTV and numerous other television outlets although they have to an extent been challenged by other forms of high-brow entertainment available. Many of them involve house inspections or the
Two years after the United States Supreme Court struck down the ban on disparaging trademarks, the Supreme Court has now struck down the Lanham Act’s similar ban on the registration of scandalous and immoral trademarks at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Iancu v. Brunetti, No. 18-302, 588 U.S. _____ (2019). On June 24, 2019, Justice Kagan delivered the majority opinion of the Court, which voted 6-3 to strike the provision as an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction on speech that violates the First Amendment.
On May 23, 2019, a federal jury unanimously found that the Houston Independent School District willfully infringed 36 of DynaStudy’s copyrighted study guides, and awarded $9.2 million dollars. (DynaStudy, Inc. v. Houston Independent School District, Case No. 4:16-cv-01442 (S.D. Tex. May 23, 2019) (verdict, document #316). As this case illustrates, “educational” use is a very narrow exception to the copyright laws. New technologies make copying easier than ever, but the jury verdict demonstrates the damages can be unlimited.
PACTE law : Key provisions in the field of industrial property
The French law for the growth and transformation of companies, (the PACTE law, from its French acronym), was definitively adopted by the French Parliament on 11 April 2019.
Over the past year the House Heritage Committee has been preparing its Shifting Paradigms report which was released in May 2019. The report considers and discusses some of the current challenges and possible solutions pertaining to the ecosystem in which artists work. It also speaks to reinvigorating copyright in Canada. This report is of interest to a broad scope of people including members of the art scene such as musicians and publishers to those in digital media and tech industries.
On Monday 15 April 2019, the Council of the EU formally approved the Directive on Copyright in the digital single market which was adopted by the European Parliament on Tuesday 26 March 2019.
According to the European Commission, the objective