Last year, the United States Supreme Court held that as long as a claim is timely filed, damages may be recovered for any loss or injury, including losses incurred more than three years before the claim is filed (Warner Chappell Music. v. Nealy). The Court expressed no opinion about whether the Copyright Act’s
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When Your Car Is a Character
By Thomas James
Carroll Shelby Licensing v. Halicki et al.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably owned a car with character, or even several cars with character, at some time in your life. A used Volkswagen Jetta with a replacement alternator that was held in place with washers. An old Plymouth Duster with a floor and doors that…
Photographers’ Rights
By Thomas James
Romanova v. Amilus, Inc., No. 23-828 (2nd Cir., May 23, 2025)
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial judge’s dismissal of a photographer’s copyright infringement complaint, holding that because “fair use” was not clearly established on the face of the complaint, the district court should not have dismissed the complaint sua sponte.
Photographer…
Court of Appeals Affirms Registration Refusal for AI-Generated Output
By Thomas James
In 2019, Stephen Thaler developed an AI system he called The Creativity Machine. He generated output he called A Recent Entrance to Paradise. When he applied to register a copyright claim in the output, he listed the machine as the author. He claimed ownership of the work as a work made for hire. In his…
Copyrights in AI-Generated Content
By Thomas James
The U.S. Copyright Office has issued its long-awaited report on the copyrightability of works created using AI-generated output. The legality of using copyrighted works to train generative-AI systems is a topic for another day.
Key takeaways:
- Copyright protects the elements of a work that are created by a human, but does not protect elements that
…
Fair Use Decision in Thomson Reuters v. Ross
By Thomas James
A court has handed down the first known ruling (to me, anyway) on “fair use” in the wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against AI companies that are pending in federal courts. The ruling came in Thomas Reuters v. Ross. Thomas Reuters filed this lawsuit against Ross Intelligence back in 2020, alleging that Ross trained its…
Top Copyright Cases of 2024
By Thomas James
Warner Chappell Music Inc. v. Nealy
The Copyright Act imposes a three-year period of limitations for copyright infringement claims. There has been a split in the circuits about whether this means that damages could be claimed only for infringement occurring during the three-year period or whether damages could be recovered for earlier acts of infringement…
New Trademark Fees Coming
By Thomas James
The USPTO has announced that trademark fees in the United States will be undergoing significant increases on January 18, 2025. Here is a summary of the changes.
Application Fees
You will no longer enjoy a discounted fee for filing a TEAS-Plus application instead of a TEAS-Standard application. All applications. other than applications filed under the…
The New Copyright Circumvention Rules
By Thomas James
In 1998, Congress enacted the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). In addition to establishing the notice-and-take-down regimen with which website and blog owners are (or should be) familiar, the DMCA made it unlawful to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to” copyrighted material. (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A)). The Act set out…
Joint Custody and Equal Shared Parenting Laws
By Thomas James
Yes, this is off-topic. It is, however, the reason I haven’t been posting to this blog lately. In addition to finishing out some cases, I have been working on developing this 90-minute program for the past few months.
In what seems like a lifetime ago, I practiced family law. During that time, I witnessed first-hand…