Copyright Office Releases Report on Best Practice Recommendations for the Mechanical Licensing Collective — The report outlines how the newly established Mechanical Licensing Collective can ensure songwriters are getting the royalties they’ve earned under the new blanket license for digital streaming, focusing on on how the MLC can identify and locate songwriters of unclaimed accrued royalties, encourage songwriters to claim their royalties, and reduce the incidence of unclaimed royalties.
A Years-Long Intellectual Property Battle Over a Painting of David Bowie Has Been Dismissed by a Berlin Court — “The court found that Moebius’s work differed from Evans’s in both form and message. ‘It radiates softness and tranquility, which is primarily caused by the altered eye area,’ the court said of Moebius’s image. ‘The drawing shows a world-famous artist performing an everyday, yet absurd gesture with great seriousness.’ By contrast, Evans’s photograph is defined by the strong contrast in its lighting and the vertical line formed by finger and nose. In it, Bowie ‘commands the viewer to remain calm,’ the court said.”
5th Circuit set to referee ‘egregious’ 12th Man copyright case — “Bynum sent the chapter to the Texas A&M Athletic Department’s media-relations team in 2010 to inquire about obtaining photographs to accompany it. The chapter listed Bynum as the book editor and copyright owner, and listed the commissioned writer as Whit Canning, a well-known Texas sportswriter. In 2014, media rep Brad Marquardt found the yellowed pages of Bynum’s 2010 manuscript, had his secretary ‘key them in,’ and posted it online as a special report that Canning had prepared for Texas A&M. . . . During the three days the story remained online, the department promoted it to ‘hundreds of thousands’ of social media followers and subscribers to its ‘TAMU Times’ e-newsletter – destroying the market for his book among its ‘core audience,’ Bynum alleged.”
RIAA and Rightscorp Defeat RCN’s Claims of “Fraudulent†Piracy Notices — “The RIAA and its anti-piracy partner Rightscorp have won a legal battle over allegedly ‘fraudulent’ piracy notices. A New Jersey federal court dismissed the complaint of Internet provider RCN, which failed to show that it was financially hurt as a direct result of any incorrect notices sent. The case is not completely over yet, however.”
French anti-trust decision on Google’s copyright talks with publishers due in coming days — “Antitrust investigators have accused Alphabet’s Google of failing to comply with the state competition authority’s orders on how to conduct negotiations with news publishers over copyright, sources who read the investigators’ report have said. Several publishers complained the talks weren’t made in ‘good faith’ and that Google didn’t provide access to some of its traffic data to determine a remuneration for news content online. Google has repeatedly said it held talks in good faith.”