Posts under ‘copyright’

As it’s becoming more and more important to be customer focused we are aiming to better understand what people and potential clients need.  So, we’ve created a Survey Monkey questionnaire around the subject of my forthcoming book Legally Branded which will be published this Spring. The book is aimed at businesses who often need to [...]

Of all the IP laws, copyright is the most wide-ranging in scope and application.      However, there is confusion as to whether copyright protects underlying ideas.  Does it protect ideas incorporated in a piece of writing, or a film or CD? Many people assume copyright does prevent the copying of ideas.  However, copyright in written materials [...]

Copyright offers crucial protection to individuals and businesses alike enabling them to own and exploit their creative works.  This might include photographs, articles, software, website designs, films, music and a range of other forms of creative expression.  Copyright law allows authors to claim compensation when their work is copied without authorisation, but a critical issue [...]

Key to Apple’s surging popularity have been the ease of use of its products and software, and seamless integration between its devices and services. Arguably unique in the personal computer industry, Apple exercises strict controls over every element of its product line.  This control over both the hardware and software used in its computers, peripherals [...]

The Pirate Bay has been thrown into the limelight a number of times, not least following a legal battle over copyright infringement which resulted in jail sentences for the four site operators in April 2009 (though at the time of writing, the website is still operational).  Recently two of its founders announced their decision to [...]

Further progress was made in the Newzbin saga last week when the High Court ordered BT to prevent its subscribers from accessing the website.  You may recall that the site had hopped abroad to the Seychelles, escaping the reach of the UK courts (or so it thought).  However, despite its emigration, the Motion Picture Association [...]

The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court recently rendered its decision in the first Intellectual Property case heard since it opened for business in October 2009.  The case, Lucasfilm v Ainsworth, concerned infringement of copyright subsisting in Stormtrooper helmets, which had in the past been produced by Andrew Ainsworth for the Star Wars films. Under ss.51 and [...]

We have written previously on copyright holders’ efforts to effect the removal of sites linking to or hosting infringing content, and also on new measures being introduced by the Digital Economy Act, which provide for injunctive relief where a website “has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with [...]

The internet revolutionised the way people could discover and share information, but as technology has developed, the volume of information which can be shared online, and the variety of its application have broadened significantly.  When the bandwidth available to typical internet users was sufficient, there was an explosion in online sharing of music through services [...]

The Hargreaves report was published on Wednesday. The report responds to the government’s instruction last autumn to look at whether current copyright laws are hindering innovation in this country. The short answer is, as Hargreaves succinctly puts it, ‘yes’; reform is needed (p1). The reaction to this report has been varied (for a list of [...]