Promoting Progress: Celebrating the Constitution’s Intellectual Property Clause — “Copyright, to me, is a friend to all authors and users. It is here to enhance our lives and experiences and to promote the progress of our nation overall. This Constitution Day, I raise a glass to copyright and echo James Madison’s views that, regarding copyright, ‘[t]he public good fully coincides … with the claims of individuals,’ especially in light of the balanced system that exists today.”
Judge Rules in Favor of Nicki Minaj in Tracy Chapman Copyright Dispute — Variety‘s Gene Maddaus reports, “The ruling protects the industry practice of developing a new song based on existing material, and then seeking a license from the original artist prior to release. U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips ruled that Minaj’s experimentation with Chapman’s song constitutes ‘fair use’ and is not copyright infringement.”
U.S. Copyright Office Issues Two Interim Rules and One Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Related to the Music Modernization Act — On January 1, 2021, the blanket license created by the Music Modernization Act goes into effect. This week, the Copyright Office issued two rules governing many of the operational details of the license along with a proposed rule concerning the public database of musical works information and transparency of the mechanical licensing collective.
Copyright Fight Over ‘Life’ Game Derails at 1st Circuit — Termination rights, work made for hire doctrine, and the world’s most boring game.
MPA & ACE Team Up With Homeland Security to Dismantle Criminal Piracy Groups — “Late Wednesday, Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that its IPR Center, the MPA, ACE, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center plus industry marketing group CTAM, had formed a broad coalition to pool their content protection efforts. . . . The stated aim of the new partnership is to use the combined resources of the groups to support Homeland Security Investigations and the IPR Center’s digital piracy investigations, including resource and information sharing with external anti-piracy groups.”