Could your Halloween costume land you in the middle of a legal nightmare?
The answer may scare you …
Partner: Cate Nagy
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Too much of a stretch to recognise copyright in yoga?
The US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit has held that the famous sequence of yoga poses (or “asanas”) developed by Bikram Choudhury (and performed at 40°C) does not attract copyright protection. A copy of the decision is here. Choudhury sued a yoga studio, Evolation Yoga, established by two former students, which offered hot read more…
Crocodile attacks in New Zealand – Lacoste death rolls Crocodile International again
New Zealand may have beaten France in the Rugby World Cup quarter finals, but one French sporting icon is winning a strategic branding war in New Zealand. For the third time in four years, the High Court of New Zealand has overturned the decision of the Assistant Commissioner of IPONZ and acknowledged the breadth of read more…
Productivity Commission releases roadmap for IP review and calls for submissions
Last week, the Productivity Commission released the Issues Paper in accordance with its comprehensive review of Australia’s IP regime (Inquiry). In a previous post, we outlined the scope of the Inquiry and the key areas of the IP regime which the Federal Government had directed the Commission to examine and report on by August 2016. read more…
The Dancing Baby case: considering fair use before sending a copyright take-down notice – implications for Australia
There has been a lot of talk lately about the “Dancing Baby” lawsuit (a.k.a Lenz v Universal Music Corp). For those readers who haven’t heard of the case, the basic story will be relatively familiar: a video, uploaded to YouTube, was then removed pursuant what is known as a “DMCA takedown notice” following an allegation read more…
(Street) Art Buff: More avenues for the protection of graffiti works
In a previous post (here), IP Whiteboard discussed the potential avenues that a street artist may have in protecting their work from defacement or removal by recourse to intellectual property rights. Although the City of Sydney is still yet to introduce its revised street art policy, we thought that last week’s judgment of the UK read more…
You’re monkey me crazy! Copyright, selfies and…monkeys?
We don’t waste any time with monkey business over here at IP Whiteboard…until it involves one of our favourite stories of recent times, combining our love of selfies with copyright and cute animals. This story is of course the tale of wildlife photographer David Slater, who claimed copyright ownership over some selfies taken by macaque monkeys read more…
Would you pay for a meme? Getty claims copyright licence fees for Socially Awkward Penguin
Posting a cringeworthy meme can often cost you a few Facebook friends. But what if the next meme you post costs you almost $900? German blog Geeksisters found out the hard way when Getty Images asked them to pay €785.40 in back licensing fees for posting the famous Socially Awkward Penguin meme to their website. read more…
Trade mark confidence signals big things to come for “The Hayne Plane”
Pre-season gridiron games aren’t usually on most Aussie’s sports radars in August – the run-up to the AFL and NRL finals usually take up most of our attention. But this year is a little different. This year, the former rugby league star Jarryd Hayne is attempting to do something that few Aussie footballers have been read more…