The CopyKat - looking backwards, looking forwards

Jerry Fisher, a photographer in Sioux Falls South Dakota, was interested in 3D printing and 3D image capture. So he went and photographed two local bronze casts of Michelangelo statues, one of Moses which is on display at Augustana College and is co-owned by Augustana and the City of Sioux Falls, and another of David (yes, the really famous one!), which is in a local city park. He blogged about his efforts to take the photos and turn them into 3D printer plans but came up against Augustana College when he uploaded preliminary model of Moses onto socia media: Fisher was promptly asked to take the Moses model down by The College who felt they had propriety over the statues (and were 'uncomfortable' with this use) and (supposedly) that their legal depatrment was of the opinionn that the College owned copyright(s) in the statues, Now Public Knowledge has provided Fisher with the answer that he already suspected was true - the College does NOT own a copyright in a 16th century reproduction statue by Michelangelo (!) and Public Knowledge's Michael Weinberg explained "Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: Augustana College had no legal right or basis to threaten Fisher with the specter of infringement. There is no copyright protection for a sculpture that was created at the dawn of the 16th century by a sculptor who died 450 years ago. All of Michelangelo’s work is firmly in the public domain. If fact, copyright didn’t even exist during Michelangelo’s lifetime. From the moment he sculpted his Moses anyone could copy, remix, and build upon it for any reason, without having to ask permission."  More on 3DPrint.com here.

James Bond, 007, the iconic master spy, is now available for more dangerous assignments from Canadian writers, thanks to a copyright quirk that allows the writing and publication in Canada of original material based on Bond creator Ian Fleming’s work. The Canadian press have noted that as of January 1st this year, the original writings of Fleming, a former British naval intelligence agent who published 12 novels and nine stories featuring 007 between 1952 and 1966, have entered the public domain. That’s because Canada’s view of copyright is that it extends for 50 years after the death of a writer. Fleming died in 1964. More on the Globe & Mail here.

Silhouette comparisons of Jacobus Rentmeester's photo of Michael Jordan,
left, and Nike's Jumpman logo, right. Taken from court documents

Phortographer Jacobus Rentmeester is suing Nike in the federal court in Oregon for copyright infringement. Not only is he asking for profits associated with Nike's Jordan brand, which generated $3.2 billion in retail sales in 2014. He also is seeking to halt current sales and plans for the brand's future. Wow! Rentmeester says he staged and shot the picture of Michael Jordan in his Olympic warm-ups in 1984 for an issue of Life Magazine .As he was a freelancer, Rentmeester retained the rights to the copyright.  After it was published, Nike's Peter Moore, who designed the first Air Jordans, paid $150 for temporary use of Rentmeester's slides. Rentmeester says Nike then used his carefully choreographed picture using Jordan's left hand to 'slam dunk' the ball, to recreate the shot with Jordan in Bulls gear with the Chicago skyline in the background, but that it was essentially still his work and his suit says "Mr. Rentmeester created the pose, inspired by a ballet technique known as a 'grand jete,' a long horizontal jump during which a dancer performs splits in mid-air," the lawsuit says. "The pose, while conceived to make it appear that Mr. Jordan was in the process of a dunk, was not reflective of Mr. Jordan's natural jump or dunking style." This photo in turn was transfomed into a 'jumping' Jordan logo - and having threatened to sue Nike back in 1985 for the use of the Jordan logo based on his photo,  ESPN says that Rentmeester agreed Nike could use the logo for two years on billboards and posters in North America, for which he was paid $15,000. The Jumpman image also was featured as a tag on the Air Jordan I shoes, which sold for $65 a pair. In 2005 Nike withdrew an advert for its skateboard brand due to its similarity to artwork for a record by punk band Minor Threat.   This could be an interesting case - and reminds the CopyKat of the recent decision by Mr Justice Birss in Temple Island Collections Ltd v New English Teas Ltd & another [2012] EWPCC 1 where infringement was found, and the decision by a Korean appellate court that found that the 'recreation' of a photograph of a natural scene of pine trees on an island set against a skyline could not be infringement - although neither of those cases took 28 years to get to court ......

and to end ..... the 'pre-1972' story about copyright in sound recordings in the USA keeps on giving - and now Zenbu Magazines LLC,  the owner of recordings by Hot Tuna, New Riders of the Purple Sage and the Flying Burrito Brothers, is seeking class-action status for suits filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California, arguing that services such as Apple’s free iTunes Radio, and Sony’s Music Unlimited - which charge subscribers to access their service - have copied tens of thousands of  pre-1972 recordings onto their servers, transmitted them and performed them without seeking permission or paying performance royalties or licensing fees to the copyright owners. Rdio Inc and Google Play are also in the firing line.  Sound recordings weren’t brought under the protection of federal copyright law until 1972 so are protected by state laws and some services, notably SiriusXM, haven’t been paying performance royalties to artists to play these older works prompting claims from both artists (with Flo & Eddie from the Turtles leading the charge), record labels and collection society SoundExchange. More here.

Wednesday's CopyKat is an off-to-court Kat: how apealing

Variety reports that MGM and James Bond producers Danjaq have filed a copyright infringement suit against NBC Universal claiming that the studio’s planned “Section 6″ feature film is a rip off of the lucrative 007 franchise. The law suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, also names screenwriter Aaron Berg and says. “This lawsuit concerns a motion picture project, in active development, featuring a daring, tuxedo-clad British secret agent, employed by ‘His Majesty’s Secret Service,’ with a ‘license to kill,’ and a 00 (double-O) secret agent number on a mission to save England from the diabolical plot of a megalomanical villain”. I have to say that does sound familiar ......  mind you, it would also sound quite like the plots of the Johhny English films too. The suit goes on to say that the the project, which is planned to be directed by Joe Cornish and starring Jack O’Connell “misappropriates from the James Bond works far beyond the signature aspects of James Bond,” and that it copies “in detail nearly every aspect of the characters, plots dialogue, themes. setting, mood and other key elements of the copyrighted James Bond literary works and motion pictures.”  In 1995 a federal court in Los Angeles ruled in favour of MGM in its contention that a Honda commercial violated its copyrights with a commercial that evoked Bond, even though that name was not used. Injunctive relief is sought. 

The American Cable Association (ACA) has become the the latest trade body to come out in support of the legitimacy of the Internet TV streaming service Aereo in the upcoming appeal in the US Supreme Court. The ACA – which represents some 850 smaller and medium-sized, independent cable companies – has filed an amicus brief urging the Court to uphold the legality of Aereo’s technology as safely fitting within the tradition of maintaining the public’s ability to access freely available local broadcast TV signals, and reject the copyright claims from broadcast companies to "protect business models and erect pay walls".  That said, the US Copyright Office general counsel Jacqueline C Charlesworth, speaking at the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Law Conference in Washington, told delegates that the legal basis for Aereo’s antenna-based online television streaming service was“fundamentally incorrect”. According to Law360, Charlesworth said the “very important case” had implications far beyond the particular business model, that really goes to on-demand or interactive streaming services in general. “Taken to its logical extreme … it would threaten a lot of existing systems where content owners are receiving royalties”. With the apparent variety of opposing opinions already highlighted in the US judiciary, surely it is time to revisit Cablevision?  

Not a work of art ......

The Gujarat High Court has dismissed a criminal complaint alleging copyright infringement against a shop owner, Hasmukh Panchal, who dealt in duplicate parts of Hyundai cars. The Court held saying that automobile parts cannot be treated as works of art for which Copyright Act can be invoked. Whist Charges under sections 63 and 65 can be used for works including to painting, sculpture, drawing, and photographs and on works of literature, its not for car parts. 

Filmakerz.org, one of the websites that was targeted by the recent wide-ranging web block order against 45 websites linking to infringing material issued by the Public Prosecutor of Rome to ISPs - has won appeal before the Court Of Appeals in Rome. Appeal judges ordered the blockade against the video sharing site be lifted on the basis that the whole site blockade was too wide and resulted in legitimate content on the Filmakerz.org platform being blocked too. The appeals court also said that web-block injunctions should only be issued against sites which are clearly profiting from the infringement they commit or enable.

And Singapore is looking to introduce blocking orders against websites which blatantly infringe copyright in proposed changes to the Copyright Act - in a move to give rights holders more effective measures to act against sites which host pirated content. A public consultation on the proposed new laws is underway till 21 April. The Media Convergence Review Panel's 2012 recommended a multi-pronged approach to address online piracy, comprising (a) public education, (b) the promotion of legitimate digital content services, and (c) the adoption of appropriate regulatory measures. 

More from PIPCU. The City of London's  Police Intelligent Crime Property Unit, who are targeting one of the most torrented, streamed and illegally downloaded TV series of all time, Game of Thrones: just one episode in series 3  racked up 4,280,000 illegal downloads. As well as creating an "Infringing Website" list, officers are trying to replace advertising banners on illegal sites with a tailored message. Rights holders identified a total of 61 websites that provided unauthorised access to the show during its first episode of the new series. In response, PIPCU has sent deterrent notices to those domains, giving the sites the chance to remove the content. If a domain does not act in time, it seems PIPCU will contact advertisers and demand that all revenue to the infringing site be shut down.

A group of film studios including Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Disney Enterprises Inc., Paramount Pictures Corp., Universal City Studios Productions, Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Virginia against MegaUpload boss Kim Dotcom, Vester Limited, the majority shareholder of Megaupload Limited, Mathias Ortmann, the site's chief technical officer, and Bram van der Kolk, who oversaw programming. The suit alleged that the defendants encouraged and profited from copyright infringement of movies and television shows before they were indicted on federal criminal charges and Megaupload was shut down.


An interesting article in the Moscow Times from Elena Trusova (Goltsblat BLP, the Russian practice of Berwin Leighton Paisner) looking at how the new Russian "Anti-piracy law" is being used against Internet sites hosting illegal audiovisual works: there seem to have been more than a hundred applications against dozens of sites - the majority from Russian content owners rather than foreign firms, and the courts "frequently use quite a general wording to describe the measures applied to the defendant, such as: "desist from creating technical conditions allowing hosting, distribution and other use of a motion picture on a certain website". Elena explains that "This approach provides some freedom of action for both the plaintiff and Roskomnadzor, in charge of enforcing the ruling during the enforcement stage. In particular, on the basis of this wording, it is quite possible not only to block access to an individual link or separate page of web-site but also to the information source as a whole, if, for instance, all its contents are used for publishing illegal content or links thereto." You can click through to the article here . 

And finally a quick review of some interesting updates

The Prenda Law 'trolling' case: the appeal by three of the attorneys who were associated with Prenda, Steele Hansmeier PLLC and Alpha Law  goes from bad to worse as the oral hearing begins. More here .

Malibu Media: an adult film company also accused of trolling, has said that it will settle cases based on the outcome of a lie detector test. Documents filed in the Northern District of Illinois Federal Court say  "Malibu will dismiss its claims against any Defendant who agrees to and passes a polygraph administered by a licensed examiner of the Defendant's choosing". Malibu have “filed 268 cases within the Northern District of Illinois". More here. 

U.S. District Judge Henry Edward Autrey has awarded Warner Bros. $2.57 million for violations of their  copyrights in The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and the Tom and Jerry cartoon series by a number of 'collectibles' dealers who repeatedly infringed their copyrights - and submitted financial figures to the court which the judge clearly thought were unreliable at best. Judge Autrey said "This court finds statutory damages of $10,000.00 per infringement to be reasonable, considering: the factual history of this case, including defendants' failure to provide accurate records in order for plaintiffs to determine the profits made for the infringements; defendants' undisputed continued infringement after the initiation of this suit; the need for specific deterrence of the defendants' further copyright violations; the need for general deterrence for others who may consider engaging in copyright violations; and comparative awards of statutory damages by other federal district courts confronted with similar violations".More here.