Mass Law Blog

In only three years the "Jumpman" case has become an established teaching tool in CopyrightX. I've taught it in the first class for three years running, and I know many other teaching fellows have as well. It's a great way to get people who are new to copyright law thinking about copyright issues, in this case whether a photograph by Nike infringes a photo of Michael Jordan taken by Jacobus Rentmeester in 1984. The two photos are show below: Rentmeester's original on the left, Nike's allegedly...

It's long been widely assumed that in-line linking is not a basis for copyright infringement. Following a recent decision by a Southern District of New York federal judge, that is no longer true. Justin Goldman took a photograph of Tom Brady. Under the copyright laws, one of his  exclusive rights is the right of public display. Goldman posted the photo to Snapchat. It went viral and was embedded in a tweet. A number of mainstream media publications posted the tweet by embedding the tweet into...

Copyright law is confusing, but music copyrights take it up a notch. Often, judges and jurors with no background in a music genre are asked to determine whether two works are "substantially similar" after being subjected to esoteric analysis by musicologists who present arguments that even a trained musician might find hard to follow. However, whether Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke's 2012 recording of "Blurred Lines" infringes Marvin Gaye's 1976 composition of “Got To Give It Up” presents...

If you were asked why copyright law exists you probably would respond along the lines of “to give authors and artists a financial incentive to create new works, and to protect the integrity of their works.” It’s unlikely you would respond, “to give someone the ability to manage their online reputation and remove defamatory online reviews.” Yet, in a bizarre case that has wound its way through the courts of Massachusetts for the last six years, that is exactly what attorney Richard Goren...