Topic: Copyright

Car websites “scraped” but only slightly dented

By Brian Gray (CA) and Claude Brunet on April 18, 2017 Posted in Copyright

In Trader v CarGurus, 2017 ONSC 1841 (CanLII), the Ontario Court of Justice has opined on a number of points arising out of the 2012 copyright amendments introduced by the Copyright Modernization Act. The interesting points in the decision concern 1. making a work available to the public 2. fair dealing 3. when is framing … Continue reading

Liability for Hyperlinks: German Court Increases Responsibility of Website Operators

By Sven Jacobs (DE) on January 20, 2017 Posted in Copyright

The Regional Court of Hamburg recently applied for the first time the new decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) regarding the liability for hyperlinks and further increased the risks and responsibilities for social media website operators. The EU Court Decision The CJEU held in September 2016 that using a hyperlink … Continue reading

Social Media, Copyright, and Blockchain

By Susan Ross (US) on December 9, 2016 Posted in Copyright

Social media has changed how people and companies interact and has provided us with some technological innovations that have raised copyright issues. In an effort to keep our readers informed of some recent developments involving social media, we wanted to provide some background relating to some headlines combining social media, copyright, and blockchain, and we … Continue reading

Copyright Office to Decrease DMCA Agent Registration Fees by 94%

By Susan Ross (US) on November 29, 2016 Posted in Copyright

As of December 1, 2016, the U.S. Copyright Office will be decreasing the fees to register a “notice and takedown” agent to $6. Any website (including social media site) that accepts third party content may be interested in taking advantage of the “safe harbor” offered in the U.S., and those that have already registered an … Continue reading

Will reverse class actions facilitate online IP enforcement in Canada?

By Daniel Daniele (CA) on October 12, 2016 Posted in Copyright

While the internet has created ample opportunities for IP rights holders to exploit their intellectual property rights online, it also poses significant challenges relating to the protection of those same IP rights from would-be infringers. The internet’s global reach combined with the sophistication and anonymity of most online users has created an environment where it … Continue reading

Internet’s ‘Hide and Seek’ Battle Continues in Canada

By Daniel Daniele (CA) on May 18, 2016 Posted in Copyright, Litigation, Privacy

The anonymity of the Internet has posed many challenges to the protection of intellectual property rights. The sheer size of the population of online users and the millions of file-sharing programs and other social media outlets that exist have left IP rights holders struggling to protect their property and goodwill in the digital era. For … Continue reading

Social media stars and IP empires

By Maya Medeiros on March 14, 2016 Posted in Copyright, General, Social media policies

Social media platforms enable users to profit from their brand and original works such as photos, videos, articles and various “mash ups”. Their brand and content may be protected by trademarks and copyrights and users may generate thousands of postings to build an extensive intellectual property portfolio. A user may develop a popular brand for … Continue reading

Social Media & IP Enforceability

By Brian Chau (CA) and Christopher Hunter on February 29, 2016 Posted in Copyright, Patent, Trademark

Social media channels represent an exciting medium to reach out to the public and potential collaborators. Social media can also play an important role in helping generate positive buzz for organizations seeking to develop a market for their products or services. For example, many of today’s companies gauge the depth of market interest in their … Continue reading

We’re back, with our top five social media stories of 2015

By Susan Ross (US), Nerushka Bowan, Mayura Noordyke (US) and Karen Sie (CA) on February 3, 2016 Posted in Copyright, Defamation, Employment and labor, Fraud, General, Privacy, Security

The Social Media Law Bulletin is back! The ongoing interest of our readers as well as the increasing impact of social media led us to re-launch the Social Media Law Bulletin. We will be bringing you coverage of one or two items approximately each week, but in the meantime, we thought we would give you … Continue reading

Who owns your Instagram content?

By Nerushka Bowan on January 28, 2015 Posted in Copyright, General

You do (at least as between you and Instagram—your employer may have ownership rights in certain situations)! Instagram does not claim ownership of any content that you post. You do grant Instagram very broad license rights: a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use content that you post. This license grant means … Continue reading

Legal considerations for social network APIs

By Maya Medeiros on December 19, 2014 Posted in Copyright, Patent, Trademark

An application programming interface (API) is a library or structured set of software tools that provides an interface to a backend software platform, such as a social networking platform, without providing direct access to the underlying source code of the platform. For example, Facebook™, Twitter™, Instagram™, LinkedIn™, Google Plus™, and Tumblr™ offer APIs so that … Continue reading

Agence France Presse v. Morel – THIRD UPDATE

By on October 22, 2014 Posted in Copyright, Litigation

We have posted previously on Agence France Presse v. Morel, the initial opinion of which was issued January 2013, as well as several updates in the case since then. The case so far Briefly summarizing the case so far, photographer Daniel Morel posted some photographs on Twitter. Agence France Presse (“AFP”) copied eight of those … Continue reading

A picture can be worth a thousand links

By Daniel Daniele (CA) on June 18, 2014 Posted in Copyright, Employment and labor, Privacy, Social media policies

From giant billboards on the highway to tiny pictures that can go viral within seconds, the use of social media sites like Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr has revolutionized the advertising industry. Companies can now reach their target audiences more quickly and more effectively by taking advantage of instantaneous posting of pictures and blogs. The use … Continue reading

Memes and GIFs: a new cultural phenomenon

By Daniel Daniele (CA) on October 1, 2013 Posted in Copyright

From “Winter is Coming” to plays on the Harlem Shake to anything involving cats, memes and GIFs (short for Graphics Interchange Format) are an increasingly popular way in which cultural ideas are shared. A meme has been characterized as a “categorization of a cultural trend or truth, a unit for communicating and collectively sharing cultural … Continue reading

Employees and DMCA “Safe Harbor”

By Susan Ross (US) on September 25, 2013 Posted in Copyright

Any employer with a web site or social media page that invites users to provide content will probably be interested in a September 18, 2013 case from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York involving Capitol Records and video-sharing site Vimeo. Capitol Records, LLC v. Vimeo LLC, No. 09 Civ. 10101 (RA) … Continue reading

Agence France Presse v. Morel – UPDATE

By on August 6, 2013 Posted in Copyright

Earlier this year, we wrote about a court opinion relating to photos posted on Twitter, in Agence France Presse v. Morel, the opinion of which was issued in January. The case, it appears, has come back to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, this time to determine the precise … Continue reading

Copyright Safe Harbor for Third-Party Content

By Seth Jaffe (US) on July 16, 2013 Posted in Copyright

Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a safe harbor for online service providers that allow users to self-post content. For companies with Web 2.0 enabled sites, 17 U.S.C. § 512(c) limits liability “for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user.” But this safe harbor … Continue reading

YouTube Class Action

By Susan Ross (US) on June 5, 2013 Posted in Copyright, Litigation

On May 15, 2013, a federal district court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class action certification in a case involving YouTube. The Football Ass’n Premier League Ltd et al v. YouTube Inc., No. 1:07-cv-03582 (S.D.N.Y. May 15, 2013). We had previously covered the case involving Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube, where the same district court ruled, on … Continue reading

Viacom v. YouTube

By Susan Ross (US) on April 22, 2013 Posted in Copyright

On April 18, 2013, a federal district court judge again granted summary judgment in favor of YouTube in a copyright infringement lawsuit originally filed by Viacom, Paramount Pictures, and others in 2007. Viacom Int’l Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., No 1:07-cv-02103-LLS (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 18, 2013). The plaintiffs had claimed that YouTube had infringed their copyrighted movies, television … Continue reading

Twitter Amends DMCA Policy Due to Copyright Complaints

By on December 3, 2012 Posted in Copyright

In an “effort to be as transparent as possible regarding the removal or restriction of access to user posted content,” social media company Twitter recently announced changes to the site’s Copyright and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) policy. Instead of merely removing the potentially infringing tweets without explanation, Twitter will now clearly mark Tweets and … Continue reading