Posts Tagged ‘copyright’

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 [...]

When a key player in the Government’s plans to strengthen the IP framework, encourages business owners to file their own trade marks, explaining this is to help them afford trade mark registration, I wonder what’s going on. Many lawyers educate the public about the value of taking legal advice.  So, it is somewhat surprising for [...]

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 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 [...]

Google and YouTube have decided to launch a YouTube Copyright School as a way to strengthen their copyright position. The copyright schools has been set up in order to teach users who infringe copyright laws the basics of copyright law. ‘Because copyright law can be complicated, education is critical to ensure that our users understand [...]

The debate over file sharing is increasingly being presented as a stand off between property rights and civic rights, as the new opinion from the Advocate General, adviser to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), now demonstrates. All the while countries rush ahead with innovative measures to clampdown on infringement. Getting a [...]

Yoga is an increasingly popular form of exercise involving the performing of a series of postures for health benefits. These postures named asanas originate thousands of years ago from India. But, as within religion, different schools evolve and branch out often attributed to the life’s work of a particular individual. Bikram Choudry who opened his [...]

Hargreaves Review In a message to the Hargreaves Review team last week Jeremy Phillips suggested a few practitioners, including myself, whose perspective may be of interest to Tom Loosemore.   Although I had been aware a review of UK copyright law was under way with a view to potentially incorporating US style fair use provisions, I [...]