Shelby Estate Wins ‘Eleanor’ Ford Mustang Copyright Lawsuit — The Shelby Trust has a clear path to building custom Mustang autos that resemble the one appearing in the 2000 Nic Cage film Gone in 60 Seconds after prevailing in court over the estate of the filmmaker. “According to a press release from the Shelby Trust, Halicki’s case was based around the concept that ‘Eleanor’ was a character in its own right, one with defined traits reflected across multiple movies that would make any build inspired by the car a commercial copy of the character.”
High Court Asks Solicitor General for Views on Genius-Google Copyright Preemption Case — Eileen McDermott of IPWatchDog reports, “The U.S. Supreme Court today invited the Solicitor General’s views in a copyright case that asks the High Court to grant a petition on the question of whether the Copyright Act’s preemption clause allows a business ‘to invoke traditional state-law contract remedies to enforce a promise not to copy and use its content?'” The case involves Google’s copying of lyrics from famous lyrics site Genius, which does not own the copyright in any of the lyrics but which prohibits reproduction, distribution, and commercial use of the lyrics accessible on its site through its terms of service.
HSI Baltimore seizes 55 websites that violated copyrights by illegally live streaming World Cup matches — A press release from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week states, “HSI Baltimore reviewed numerous examples of infringing content accessible from each of the subject domain names. Each domain was associated with a website offering free access to copyrighted digital media content – specifically, live streamed sessions of World Cup soccer games. . . . Based on the pervasive use of advertising on each site, the investigation alleges that the purpose for distributing the infringing content is the private financial gain to these websites’ operators. By seizing the subject domain names, the government prevents third parties from acquiring the name and using it to commit additional crimes, or from continuing to access the websites in their present forms.”
Google’s Permanent Deindexing of Pirate Sites Spreads Across Europe — Andy Maxwell reports at TorrentFreak, “Google’s decision to completely deindex pirate sites from search results is spreading across Europe. Earlier this year the MPA admitted that around 10,000 domains had already been removed but today’s figure is likely to be much higher. Takedown notices on the Lumen Database and a report published in Lithuania cast additional light on a stealthy but massive piracy deindexing program.”
Inside the Copyright Office’s honors program for young lawyers — A recent episode of the Federal Drive with Tom Temlin podcast featured an interview with Keyana Pusey, currently a Barbara Ringer fellow at the US Copyright Office, who discussed her experience working for the Office as part of the two year honors program. Listen to the episode or read a transcript at the link above. And as a reminder, the Copyright Office is currently accepting applications for the September 2023 Fellowship until December 31; interested attorneys in the initial stages of their career can find more information and application instructions here.