Copyright

The world was a different place in 1988.  The Soviet Union was still in existence, the Berlin Wall hadn’t yet fallen, the only Star Wars being discussed was President Regan’s anti‑missile shield and the internet was still a twinkle in Tim Bernard-Lee’s eye.  It was also the year that the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act […]

Computer games have historically been considered the preserve of children and students with too much time on their hands. However, as those children and students have grown up and become adults, a lot of them have retained their love of computer games and it has become a more mainstream and acceptable hobby. As often happens […]

Music has been big business for a long time. The rewards for artists and their record companies, as everyone knows, can be immense. Not surprisingly, this means that the rights which make money from the music at the heart of it all are jealously guarded. The most recent example to reach the news has been […]

Have you managed by some miracle to avoid the furore which surrounds the Bake Off, or The Great British Bake Off as it is properly entitled? News of its sale to Channel 4 has reached unprecedented levels of media coverage this week. An eye watering £75m was paid for a three-year deal for the show. […]

In an age when sports broadcasting deals involve millions if not billions of pounds, it is not surprising that broadcasters and governing bodies will take all the steps they can to stop anything that they see as infringing their intellectual property rights. Sky and the ECB (the governing body for cricket in England and Wales) […]

What better way to grab people’s attention than to take a ride on the back of the Olympic train? Remember the excitement surrounding the London Olympics. I attended some of the events myself and the buzz around London was staggering. Shops were full of merchandise and people flocked to get their hands on the memorabilia. […]

Intellectual property law has never been a laughing matter. Until now. Having a sense of humour on the internet is fraught with many dangers, but, beyond the minefields of taste and offence, the wrong joke, using the wrong pop culture reference, could also get a comedian sued. Using material from a song or a film in […]

Every now and again a legal case will capture the imagination of the public. The monkey ‘selfie’ case is one such example. Back in August 2014 we reported on the exploits of UK wildlife photographer David Slater. In 2011 Mr. Slater took up residence with a troop of crested black macaque monkeys in Indonesia with […]

Since 1988 the company Warner/Chappell Music has collected copyright royalties in relation to the song Happy Birthday.  A recent judgment in the US has put an end to that. If you are a copyright owner you’re entitled to charge for the use of your copyrighted work. It can be lucrative – it’s estimated that Warner […]

“BREAKING NEWS: Twitter is hiding tweets reported stolen. And it’s referring to the author as a ‘copyright holder’” The tweet was made on Saturday 25 July 2015 by @PlagiarismBad in reference to copyright infringement over Twitter. @PlagiarismBad detected five lifted tweets that plagiarised a joke referring to ‘juice cleansing’ composed by writer and comedian Olga Lexell […]

On 3 November this year, one of the longest-running adventures of famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was finally put to rest. Holmes is surely among the most famous and popular characters in the literary canon, a fact that was apparent to writers other than creator Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle even while he was still alive. French author […]

For some time now, owners of copyright in films and music have been able to ask the court to order internet service providers (ISPs) to prevent access to websites which make available unauthorised copies of their material. A recent judgment means that trade mark owners can now do the same. The case was brought by […]