Senate Judiciary Committee Passes CASE Act Legislation Streamlining Copyright Disputes — A big step forward for the bill, though it still has a long way to go. Based on recommendations made by the US Copyright Office in 2013, the bill would create a voluntary, inexpensive alternative venue to federal court for small copyright claims, giving individual creators and artists much needed relief.
Teaching Songwriting to World Dignitaries at the United States Patent and Trademark Office — Songwriter and Arts Envoy Amanda Colleen Williams shares her experience: “This week I had the privilege of leading a workshop for the assembled world copyright dignitaries at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) / GIPA Copyright Seminar 2019.”
Disney Beats Antitrust Claim, But Must Face False Advertising Over Movie Download Codes — Redbox’s kitchen sink defense largely fails. Disney’s lawsuit against the movie rental company, which is aimed at Redbox’s practice of reselling separately the digital download codes that come with DVDs and Blu-Rays, will move forward.
Plagiarism in Pop Culture — Jonathan Bailey explores some of the interesting moral questions involving the events in the recently released film Yesterday. In that film, a struggling songwriter wakes up after an accident to find himself in a world where the Beatles never existed, and thus he is the only one to remember their music. He takes the opportunity to start performing the songs as his own, which launches him into fame and fortune (but at what cost?).
In memoriam:
Sound policy, as well as history, supports our consistent deference to Congress when major technological innovations alter the market for copyrighted materials. Congress has the constitutional authority and the institutional ability to accommodate fully the varied permutations of competing interests that are inevitably implicated by such new technology.
——Justice John Paul Stevens, who passed away Tuesday, writing in the seminal copyright decision Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 US 417, 431 (1984).