THE CHRISTMAS COPYKAT!

The popular British sitcom “Only Fools and Horses” is at the heart of a copyright row between two theatre companies with the company behind the official “Only Fools and Horses: The Musical”, Phil McIntyre Entertainments (PME) taking legal action against another company who have produced an allegedly unauthorised production based on  the original TV series. According to a letter seen by WIPR, PME has the exclusive right to produce live performances based on the sitcom. The company has accused Australian theatre company Interactive Theatre International (ITI) of infringing its copyright by producing Only Fools: The (cushty) Dining Experience” as “a loving tribute to the BBC series”. This production promises a “hilarious night out with the Trotters at The Nag’s Head”, including a three course meal. In 2016, WIPR reported that “Fawlty Towers” creator John Cleese was considering legal action against ITI after learning of its “Faulty Towers: the Dining Experience” production. 

The Los Angeles Times reports that after 3 rejections, the US Copyright Office has finally relented and decided that  American Airlines' logo is creative enough to copyright, ending a two-year-long dispute between the airline and the Copyright Office.

A link to a very useful review of the US's Music Modernization Act, The Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act which was met with approval by songwriters and music industry executives alike, and praised by stakeholders for addressing issues with digital music streaming services.  The Act combines three separate bills, The Music Modernization Act (MMA); Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society (CLASSICS) Act; and Allocation for Music Producers (AMP) Act.  These bills, as well as JD Supre's take-aways for copyright owners, are summarized here https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/deck-the-halls-with-new-music-law-what-68996/

Techcrunch was one of many online publications reporting that Spotify has settled the $1.6 billion lawsuit filed by music publisher Wixen Music Publishing in December 2017. The publisher, which represented artists including  Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks and Neil Young, alleged copyright infringement, saying that Spotify was its catalogue without a proper license and that Spotify “neither obtained a direct or compulsory mechanical license. The financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Spotify has not filed a disclosure to shareholders with the SEC — an indication that the $1.6 billion was not awarded. Spotify and Wixen have put out a joint statement saying they’ve agreed to a final dismissal of the lawsuit saying “The conclusion of that litigation is a part of a broader business partnership between the parties, which fairly and reasonably resolves the legal claims asserted by Wixen Music Publishing  relating to past licensing of Wixen’s catalog and establishes a mutually-advantageous relationship for the future.” 

And finally, the Smithsonian tells us that at midnight on New Year’s Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain - the first time in 21 years since a "mass expiration" of copyright in the U.S. The deluge of works includes hundreds of thousands of books, musical compositions, paintings, poems, photographs and films. After January 1, any record label can issue a dubstep version of the 1923 hit “Yes! We Have No Bananas,” any middle school can produce Theodore Pratt’s stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and any historian can publish Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis with her own extensive annotations. Any artist can create and sell a feminist response to Marcel Duchamp’s seminal Dadaist piece, The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) and any filmmaker can remake Cecil B. DeMille’s original The Ten Commandments and post it on YouTube.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS to all who celebrate on the 25th December or another chosen date, and to everyone, can we wish you a happy, peaceful and prosperous 2019.  Joyeux Noël et bonne année, Prettige Kerstdagen en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar, Auguri di buon Natale e felice Anno Nuovo & Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo. 

THE COPYKAT

American Airlines has filed a legal action against the U.S. Copyright Office after it was denied the registration of American Airlines' logo.  American Airlines Group, Inc. merged with US Airways and introduced its new logo five years ago. The new logo features a diagonal blue and red line with a bird's head in the middle. The Fort Worth-based carrier applied to register the new logo, which it dubbed the Flight Symbol, in 2016. In a move that surprised American, the Copyright Office denied American's registration. At one point, the Copyright Office reportedly said about the logo: "While the bar for creativity is low, it does exist and the work cannot glide over even its low heights." American disagrees, arguing that its Flight Symbol "easily" meets the creativity threshold necessary to register for copyright protection. The airline said that in most cases the Copyright Office's decisions are consistent and well-reasoned - but filed the lawsuit as here the office’s refusal “arbitrary, capricious … and an abuse of discretion” More here. 

The Von Zobel family from Giebelstadt, C1770

The CJEU has backed the opinion of Advocate General, Maciej Szpunar in a German case that pitted a defendant (Michael Strotzer) who claimed he could not be liable for online infringement because he and his parents used the same internet connection, and the need to balance the (here) conflicting rights  of a right to family life against the right of a copyright owner to protect their rights. The conclusion?  The court have upheld the AG's opinion that  "The right to respect for family life, recognised in article seven of the Charter Of Fundamental Rights of the EU, cannot be interpreted in such a way as to deprive right holders of any real possibility of protecting their right to IP" and confirmed the AG's position that  Strotzer was "abusing the right to protection of family life by invoking that right, not in order to protect the members of his family against liability for the infringement of copyright with which they clearly have no connection, but solely in order to escape his own liability for that infringement" - whilst a fair balance has to be to be struck, an individual's right to a private and family life doesn't trump the right of a copyright owner who is seeking an effective remedy for an infringement.

For an opinionated but highly readable critique of the proposed reforms to South Africa's intellectual property laws - look not further that Sadulla Karjiker's article Shambolic Copyright Amendment Bill will favour Google and its ilk in Business Day:  "There is no point in mincing my words about the passage of the proposed Copyright Amendment Bill thus far: it has been shambolic and would embarrass a banana republic. The reason the portfolio committee arrogated to itself the responsibility of drafting the bill was because the draft bill produced by the department was so poorly drafted that it resulted in wide-ranging criticisms from various stakeholders. Well, the portfolio committee’s efforts have quite frankly not been much better. Not only has the technical drafting been poor, but the department, and now the portfolio committee, continue to try to railroad a particularly skewed agenda through parliament." There is more - and it's all here.

And more of the same - or similar:  The American Law Institute describes itself as the “leading independent organisation in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernise and improve the law” and periodically the ALI issues what have generally been regarded as well reasoned, well researched and academically sound ‘Restatements Of The Law’. But now the record music and music publishing sectors in the USA have taken great exception to the ALI's latest Restatement, on copyright, claiming that far from being independent lawyers and academics - they are comprised of those who have pushed to restrict copyright, with one comment being the authors are "notoriously anti-creator copyleft irritators". The Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers Association have written a joint letter to the ALI, and NMPA boss David Israelite said a statement yesterday. “The American Law Institute’s so-called ‘Restatement Of Copyright Law ... was written by extremist anti-copyright lawyers in an attempt to redefine copyright law” - with the letter saying "in recent years copyright law for music has faced repeated tests and challenges, including for those who legislate and interpret the law, in large part due to the transformation of the music industry from physical to digital” and  “Important copyright law issues for music are before Congress, the courts and agencies”, they add. “Under these circumstances, attempting to ‘restate’ copyright law for music now is a difficult, if not an odd, exercise” and that  “copyright law is ill suited for restatement by ALI at this time, especially as envisioned by the [authors]".

And finally, an interesting read on copyright law reform in the Financial Times and the positive and negative sides of YouTube - with a quote from our very own John Enser! 

Money for nothing: copyright law, YouTube, and the future of music [Part II]

More here Money for nothing: copyright law, YouTube, and the future of music [Part II]. And YouTube certainly hasn't given up on trying to get rid of Article 13, with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki warning video makers about the "threat" of Article 13 in a blog post, urging them to "take action immediately" and protest the ruling with videos and social media posts - more here https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/22/youtube-susan-wojcicki-creators-protest-eu-article-13-copyright-law.html