The following opinion piece, found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/opinion/steal-this-column.html discusses Jimmy Wales’s (of Wikipedia) reasoning for getting involved in the blackout. While Wales does [...]]]> Many of us recall the recent “black out” day where several websites, including Google and Wikipedia decided to go “black” for the day in protest of pending legislation in both Houses of The Congress.

The following opinion piece, found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/opinion/steal-this-column.html discusses Jimmy Wales’s (of Wikipedia) reasoning for getting involved in the blackout. While Wales does not believe that it is acceptable to allow endless copyright infringement and he does recognize that there is a problem and that hacking into federal government agency websites is not helping, he believed that both SOPA and PROTECT IP went too far.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, those pieces of legislation are dead. But there is alternative legislation pending that might beef up enforcement without putting such a heavy burden on internet service providers and website owners. The OPEN Act, introduced in the United States Senate, would grant powers to the International Trade Commission to issue temporary restraining orders against websites that specialize in selling bootlegs and the like. The ITC would also have the power to stop payments to these websites. The OPEN Act’s text can be found here: http://wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Open%20Act%20As%20Filed%20by%20Sens%20Wyden%20Moran%20and%20Cantwell.pdf

Of course, the fun doesn’t stop with this new piece of legislation. While Americans have been celebrating the death of SOPA and PROTECT IP, the Europeans are working on trying to get something similar in place over there called ACTA (Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). This Act is supposed to target copyrighted and trademarked goods in commerce from counterfeiting. But, as with SOPA and PROTECT IP, opponents argue that it goes too far and will stifle internet freedom and innovation. In fact, the Europeans are taking this so seriously that they have held demonstrations and there are plans for more. The United States has already signed onto this Act and the issue has moved into focus in Europe. The issue is a bit more focused on overseas websites and for that reason hasn’t quite garnered the attraction in the US. For more information, please see here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/technology/06iht-acta06.html

In the meantime, we can probably all agree that these are interesting times for copyright law. It can be easily argued that copyright law needs to be changed to account for existing technologies.

Author:
Rebecca M. Stadler

As a background for the people that haven’t heard of these Acts, let me explain. As many know, the advent of [...]]]> Many people have been paying attention to our fair elected officials and where they would come down with respect to supporting or not supporting the dual Acts collectively known as SOPA and PROTECT IP.

As a background for the people that haven’t heard of these Acts, let me explain. As many know, the advent of the internet and, in particular, the advent of cable and internet connections that allow for very fast downloading of large files has caused a lot of consternation for the music industry and for the large movie industry. Almost all of us have benefited from obtaining a free song from a download before. Sometimes, it sure is nice to be able to obtain some of the songs for free. Some of us may have even obtained a downloaded movie for free.

While some of us may enjoy these perks of a fast internet connection, the copyright holder is having his or her or its (wait aren’t corporations people?) copyrights violated. While some don’t agree with the concept of ownership of intellectual property, the fact remains that as the law stands now, people can have onwership in their copyrightable work. That isn’t likely to change.

So with that background, the movie and recording industries have worked really hard to try to protect their rights. It is very difficult for the movie and recording industry to police their work. Then when they do decide to go after an individual for copyright infringement, it turns out to be a stay-at-home mom who downloaded 10 songs 3 years ago and the industry looks malicious.

So, what should the industry do to protect itself? One thought was to add more legislation to allow the federal government to go after copyright violators with more force. Hence, SOPA and PROTECT IP. These two acts did just that. In particular, the two pieces of legislation was aimed at foreign websites that engaged in online piracy. In response to these acts, many technologists in the social media industry have organized protests and even went so far as to encourage some websites to hold “black outs”. This side of the argument says that the legislation is too broad and far reaching and would infringe on civil liberties, in particular, the right to free speech. The attention shined on the legislation was strong enough to get President Obama to announce that he cannot support the legislation and will not sign it into law.

At this point, it appears that the two acts are off the table. They could, of course, come back at a time when people aren’t paying attention or even as add ons to a department of defense bill.

In a bit of interesting timing, as SOPA and Protect IP are being pulled off life support and allowed to die, the Feds went after and shut down a website called Megaupload. This appears to be evidence that the federal government does have some tools at its disposal to go after huge websites that are doing a lot of piracy.

It will be interesting to see whether the Congress goes back to the drawing board and revises the legislation to address some of the civil liberty issues that were pointed out by the social media and technology industry. If they are able to allay some of those concerns, then maybe we can get some legislation that will help protect the intellecutal property rights of individuals and corporations without infringing on our basic human rights. I hope they can “make it work”!

Author:
Rebecca M. Stadler

In particular, Kodak has [...]]]> By now, most people have probably heard that Kodak has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This type of protection means that Kodak is looking for help with reorganizing their company. Recently, of course, much has been made of Kodak’s vast patent portfolio and how some of it might be monetized.

In particular, Kodak has many patents that it doesn’t use or need. Part of their strategy was to obtain patents in many different areas of technology, while only actually commercializing some of the inventions in the patents. The remaining patents can be thought of as non-essential. That is, some of these patents are not essential for Kodak to be able to practice their technology because they are not practicing these areas of technology. The key is that other companies are practicing in these areas of technology and might benefit from buying these patents from Kodak.

The net result could be that Kodak sells patents, makes money off the patents, but is still able to practice their core technology. The money from these patents might buy them enough time to turn themselves around.

Kodak is such a raging success story for Rochester, NY and we in Buffalo are rooting for Kodak and Rochester.  New York, like the rest of the country, is going through some difficult struggles right now and we want to see our fellow New Yorkers succeed. Further still, Kodak is a great success story for all of America and to see them not be able to pick themselves up and turn it around would be a shame and a huge loss.

So, with that, we hope that Kodak is able to use its patent portfolio to soldier on. Oh and as patent attorneys, we love hearing that Kodak has a strong patent portfolio and we love using it as an argument regarding why patents still matter. Because they do!

Author:
Rebecca M. Stadler

This CLE was a broad overview of sports law and contracts and licensing issues. Sports shows up in every [...]]]> This morning, I attended a CLE program with the above title. The event was at the Buffalo Club, which means that I had to dress up and look fancy or else they would kick me out!!

This CLE was a broad overview of sports law and contracts and licensing issues. Sports shows up in every day life regardless of whether we like it or not.

The sports industry is a billion dollar industry. One second of advert space shown during the super bowl is $300,000. Almost everything comes down to money. Licensing is advantageous for purposes of creating a new revenue stream for the respective sports league. For the licensor, the fan base of any given sports league is worldwide, allowing the licensor to gain access to this broader market.

1985 was the year that licensing kicked off with respect to t-shirts and other items.

Product endorsement agreements allow sports leagues to have exclusivity, reduce the number of licensees, exercise greater control over the brands, et cetera. NFL is the biggest sports league with NASCAR catching up. In 2002, the NFL signed a 10 year agreement with Reebok for exclusive rights. This started a trend with the other leagues. This trend brushed smaller companies to the side and started an antitrust lawsuit based on violations of the Sherman Act, the case was American Needle Inc. In 2010, the United States Supreme Court said that there was a monopoly and the case was sent back to the lower court. In response, the NFL changed its licensing strategy. The NFL has moved away from the solo licensing agreement to include more companies than just one. Each different type of clothing has an exclusive license, that is one hat company, one jersey company, et cetera.

Video games are another type of product that requires licensing from the various sports leagues. Additionally, individual athletes can have their own licensing agreements. For example, Tiger Woods. He was the first athlete to sign an individual licensing agreement. Once his scandal broke out, some of the deals were broken, but that has actually started to reverse and he is signing agreements again. Some deals have been pulled if the athlete runs into problems with the criminal justice system.

The presentation ended with a discussion of the collegiate sports licensing and a case study of the NCAA.

Overall, it was a good CLE program, but discussing how much money some individuals make in a really short amount of time was rather discouraging. We reward people for having abilities to do things with their bodies, which is great. But often there isn’t as much reward when an indivudal is doing something with their mind.

Author:
Rebecca M. Stadler