This blog is published under a Creative Commons license that allows for non-commercial use. Adam Curry recently sued to enforce his CC license in Amsterdam and prevailed. This appears to be the first time a CC license has been evaluated in a court (if you're aware of others, please advise).
No comment from Prof. Lessig (discoverer of the CC license) yet.
Commentary from Prof. Patry with many links here.
Azul says Sun is attempting to force the company into paying an "exorbitant" sum of money to settle patent infringement allegations, as well as demanding part ownership of Azul and high up-front fees and royalties on the hardware the company sells.
If Azul does not comply, Sun has threatened with legal action, according to the allegations.
"Attempts to reach an agreement failed when Sun gave Azul an ultimatum: accept its final proposal or face litigation," Azul said in a statement. The company says the issues surround claims that it has misappropriated trade secrets and infringed on Sun's patents.
One untapped source for trademarks are holograms. Holograms are most notably used for anti-counterfeiting purposes. Businesses use them to distinguish their products from fakes. Take drivers’ licenses as an example. Most, if not all states, issue drivers’ licenses with state specific holograms to signify that the license is authentic.
Similarly, businesses should be able to use holograms as a source identifier and a means to distinguish goods or services from others in the marketplace. All of the existing trademark laws should still apply. Therefore, a useful hologram should be distinctive enough to be used to uniquely identify itself and its products or services to consumers.
In Holograms The next generation of trademarks? (appearing in the latested issue of IP Review), Dr. Ralf Sieckmann offers the following advice for registering a holographic device as a trademark:
-Describe the hologram in as much detail as possible, providing visual views of the hologram in various frames with descriptions of angle and appearance.
-File holograms in countries that have a liberal view on the registration of simple holograms, such as in France, Australia and the United States.
-If a country’s trademark procedures are too restrictive, consider filing an international application through one of these countries first. Once registered, WIPO will simply duplicate the trademark as an international trademark, and it will be up to each country to determine the registerability of the hologram mark.
-Last, but not least, if such an approach does not work, an alternative is to file a national or Community Design. Such designs can be registered on packaging, as a film or on other parts, provided the hologram is new or less than 12 months on the market.
When considering your next tradmark, think about using holograms. The are a vast number of options... at least for now, anyway.
A Copyfight reader pointed me to a Slate story on digital thespians. Epstein talks about two kinds of digital creations: wholly new 'synthespians' as well as digitized representations of actual actors (Tom Hanks for Polar Express; Sean Connery for the From Russia with Love game). Although the technical hurdles to such captures remain quite large - especially if your goal is true-to-life, fool-an-audience reproduction - the reader's question was different.
To wit: what rights do you purchase/license/contract for in creating such a reproduction of a real person? Rights to the "likeness?" Performance rights? Do either of these cover things the actor never physically did or said? Is there an exclusivity clause? There are clearly some issues around the ownership of a character, if that character has appeared before (e.g. Connery's Bond) but usually the character rights reside with the studio. But if you want the Connery Bond instead of a generic James Bond you also have to incude Connery in the deal, as well as whatever studio or estate has the Bond character rights.
IANAL, but I'm hoping some of my readers are or can point me to resources from people who've actually worked in this area.