Congress’ copyright office has its first chief economist — Tom Temin speaks with Brent Lutes, who was named as the first Chief Economist within the US Copyright Office. Lutes talks about his background and what the role entails. “There’s going to be an internal component and an external component. And the internal component will be understanding how policy decisions and operational decisions affect access to and benefits from our copyright system, then we’ll have an external component where a large part of my job will be establishing a research agenda, not just for myself, for the copyright office, but hopefully for the academic community to answer the questions that we really care about.”
‘Vape’ is the word: U.S. judge allows ‘Grease’ parody — “In a 22-page decision, [Judge] Swain said that by keeping the ‘Grease’ characters and plot arc while changing the script and lyrics, ‘Vape’ ‘comments on how misogynistic tendencies have both evolved since “Grease” was developed and remain the same.’ She distinguished the case from a March 2021 appeals court decision that Andy Warhol violated federal copyright law by drawing on a photograph of Prince for a series of images of the rock star, because the images were not transformative.”
Copyright: Commission urges Member States to fully transpose EU copyright rules into national law — As we approach the one year anniversary of the deadline for EU member states to transpose the copyright in the Digital Single Market directive, the European Commission has sent a formal submission to those countries that have yet to enact the new rules in their national legislation.
Final Rule Released For Copyright Claims Board Proceedings — This week, the US Copyright Office has published a final rule governing the initiation and prosecution of claims in the new copyright small claims tribunal. This completes all the regulations needed for the tribunal, which is anticipated to begin operating in just a few weeks.
Paper’s take-off — Some interesting historical highlights tracing paper’s emergence as the material of choice for the written word.