Many news reporters use photos and other copyrighted materials and then claim fair use as a defense to infringement claims. Peter Brauer learned this lesson after his documentary video was used by MSNBC. He had a strong response: HT: to Ray Dowd over at the Copyright Litigation blog for the video. With respect to news [...]

I had the pleasure of joining  TWiL (This Week in Law) yesterday for a second time.   Host Evan Brown, guests Wendy Seltzer, J. Matt Buchanan, and I discussed fair use, privacy issues, DMCA take down notices, and other things in Episode #124.  Check my first appearance in Episode #56.

Kind of Bamboozled: Why ‘Kind of Bloop’ is Not a Fair Use  

As reported by the Hollywood Reporter, a California district court has granted summary judgment to Glen E. Friedman for his copyright infringement case against Thierry Guetta for creating, reproducing, displaying, and selling products incorporating Plaintiff’sphotograph of the hip hop music group Run-DMC.  Friedman’s original photograph as shown in the Complaint is: Friedman alleged in the Complaint that Guetta sold [...]

From the Maine Antique Digest: [Jessica] Litman claimed that she was “a little disturbed by the reasoning in the decision,” because it doesn’t “take into account the standards of the art world in which you can add something important even when you are ripping off someone else. . . . She added that “we want [...]

Ken Kaminesky is a commercial travel and lifestyle photographer based in Montreal, Canada.  He recently interviewed me on photography and the law.  Check it out!

When tragedy strikes, new agencies often rush to find photos to accompany the story.  Such was the case during the recent horrible tragedy in Tucson.  One of the victims was a nine year old child.  So a few media organizations used a portrait of the child and her mother taken by a professional photographer when reporting about the [...]

As reported in my article, the difficulty with fair use is that “it is sometimes difficult to predict how a court will rule on a fair use case.”  Well, even the courts don’t always agree with each other. Take, for example, the  Gaylord v. The United States case.  The U.S. Court of Federal Claims (a [...]

The issue as to whether photographs of copyrighted works is a derivative work/infringement has raised its head again, and Mike Hipple probably thinks that it’s ugly. Specifically, as explained by my November 17, 2009, blog, courts have disagreed as to whether photographs of copyrighted works are derivative works.   And for Hipple, the question is complicated by [...]

Check out attorney/photographer Samuel Lewis‘ important article on “Get It In Writing” in this month’s Digital Photo Pro.  To compare, see what happened when deals were being made for the “Precious” movie, as explained by the Property Intangible blog. The Consumerist reports Walmart would not print some photos of a dead relative for a funeral. [...]