Accused File-Sharer Won’t Back Down

Jammie Thomas is among 26,000 or so people who were sued by the music industry as part of a campaign to stop the illegal sharing of online music files. But the 30-year-old single mother from Brainerd, Minn., is the only defendant whose case has made it to trial, Wired reports.…

Oct 2, 2007 2:57 PM CDT

Nursing Homes Sue Over PI Firm’s Ad

A personal injury law firm has been sued by the owners of a nursing home chain prominently mentioned in the law firm’s Web site advertising. Genesis Healthcare Corp. contends McHugh Fuller Law Group misappropriated its trademark and logo by including these brands on a Web page seeking plaintiffs interested in…

Sep 7, 2007 5:27 PM CDT

Suit Claims Right to Choreography

A lawsuit against the New Dance Group claims choreographers or their heirs have the right to control performances of dances first staged by the New York company in the 1930s and ’40s. The suit claims the choreographers own the dances, with copyright registrations in some cases that prove their claims,…

Sep 4, 2007 6:01 PM CDT

Designers Sue Over Knockoffs

More than 20 designers concerned about knockoffs of their fashions have filed lawsuits against the clothing chain Forever 21. Other stores have been sued as well, the New York Times reports. The designers are hoping to expand laws that bar counterfeit goods to prevent sales of clothing that copies their…

Sep 4, 2007 4:18 PM CDT

Rehearing in Freelancer Copyright Case

A federal appeals court has agreed to rehear a case that considers whether freelance writers have rights to stories published in a magazine’s exact reproduction in digital CD-ROM format. The decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case en banc could reinstitute a conflict with…

Sep 4, 2007 11:04 AM CDT

Documentary Tests Fair Use

A new documentary called “War Made Easy” tests fair use law by using unlicensed network news footage. The producers paid for about 60 percent of the clips and contend they are permitted to use the other footage under fair-use provisions of federal copyright law, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The…

Aug 17, 2007 12:27 PM CDT

Facebook Favored in Faceoff

The creator of Facebook has the upper hand in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the founders of a competing social networking Web site, according to one expert. R. Scott Feldmann, an intellectual property lawyer at Crowell & Moring, said Facebook appears to have the better legal arguments, according to…

Aug 13, 2007 3:45 PM CDT

Quelle Crime! Teen Held for Potter Book Posted en Français

A 16-year-old has been arrested and briefly jailed for allegedly translating the entire 759-page book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, into French and posting it on the Internet within days of its July 21 release. The teen, a high school student from Aix-en-Provence in southern France, is not named…

Aug 8, 2007 7:27 PM CDT

Judge Skeptical of Facebook Suit

Lawyers for the founders a social networking Web site will get a chance to revise their infringement complaint against their big-name competitor, Facebook Inc. But they may face an uphill battle, if comments by a Boston federal judge during a pretrial hearing yesterday are any indication. Judge Douglas Woodlock was…

Jul 26, 2007 8:29 PM CDT

Firm’s Archive Search Not Illegal

A Pennsylvania law firm has emerged unscathed from its trip through the “Wayback Machine.” Judge Robert Kelly of Philadelphia has ruled Harding, Earley, Follmer & Frailey did not infringe a company’s copyright by obtaining its archived Internet pages using a search tool called the Wayback Machine. Nor did the law…

Jul 24, 2007 1:20 PM CDT

E-Discovery Order May Be a First

A Los Angeles magistrate has ordered a Web search engine to collect customer data stored in random access memory in perhaps the first case to require such discovery.

TorrentSpy, a search engine that directs users to video files, is appealing the order, the Recorder reports. The company is being sued for copyright infringement by six movie studios seeking access to RAM to learn more about the files sought by site visitors.

Jun 13, 2007 12:24 PM CDT

Andy Griffith Wins Right to Run for Sheriff

Although he lost resoundingly the last time around, Andy Griffith can continue to run for sheriff in Grant County, Wis., a federal judge has ruled. The federal court in Madison, Wis., was brought into the electoral fray by a lawsuit filed by the “real” Andy Griffith, a television actor now…

May 7, 2007 6:04 PM CDT

Out From the Stacks

Librarians Lead Legal Battles Over the Patriot Act, Copyright, Tech Issues

Aug 29, 2005 6:18 AM CDT

Fear of Blogging

As the Law Catches Up to the Technology, Bloggers Look for a Few Good Attorneys

Jul 28, 2005 6:16 PM CDT

The Education of Larry Lessig

A Supreme Court Loss Inspires a Stanford Professor to Renew his Copyright Fight

Jan 2, 2004 7:06 AM CST