Category: Publishing

Likelihood of Copyright Confusion – The FOURTH ESTATE Case

So okay, the Supreme Court just issued a narrow but extremely important case on copyright registration. It’s called Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com and you can read it here: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/fourth-estate-public-benefit-corp-v-wall-street-com/

In a nutshell what happened was this: A content producer called “Fourth Estate,” clever journalism reference et cetera, licensed some articles to a website called “Wall-Street.com.” WSC canceled the license but left the articles up on their website. Putting the articles on the website without a license is (potentially) copyright infringement, and Fourth Estate sued them.

There is a rule in the US that for US-created works, you can’t sue for copyright infringement unless you’ve tried to register the copyright on the work and the Copyright Office has either issued the copyright certificate or has refused to register the copyright. (We’ll get into that in a minute.) Fourth Estate had not registered the copyrights on the works, so they couldn’t sue. Not a problem: they just need to register the works and then, off to the courthouse. The damages would be retroactive, and we’ll get into that later.

HOWEVER.

I’m Part of (Space Quest) History!

The Space Quest Historian, a gaming commentator and streamer with a particular interest in the famous “Space Quest” game franchise, asked me for some comments related to Activision’s ownership and activities in relation to it. I sent him an email discussing the matter generally and he was nice enough to use it in a video. It’s at the bottom of this post.

A few comments:

This is a great video and he got almost everything right. The parts he was a little iffy on we’ll blame on the lawyer who made them too complicated. 🙂
I want to make one thing absolutely clear. I am not affiliated with Activision, Sierra On-Line, Codemasters, or Assemble Entertainment. I do not and have never represented any of them or any of the other parties involved in the Leisure Suit Larry franchise. (I have represented parties in dealings with one or more of those entities, and I have nothing bad to say about any of them in that context.) I do NOT know what the licensing/ownership status of the Leisure Suit Larry franchise or any particular part of it is. My hypotheticals were just that – hypothetical. I don’t think SQH said otherwise, but it might not be absolutely clear that this was just me speculating
His opinion on Activision’s moral and ethical considerations in how they handle the various Sierra On-Line properties is just that – his opinion. I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with it in any particular way, although obviously as an attorney for content creators and rightsholders I have a different perspective.

Anyway, he’s a funny guy and this is an incredibly well-edited video, including projecting relevant bits of my email at the right times. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing that will interest you.

(Note: A little NSFW language.)

TwitchCon 2018!

A very sharp young lawyer (well, she’s waiting for her bar results but I have confidence) who goes by LadyLawTM on the Internet invited me to speak on a panel she wanted to do on lootboxes, games, and gambling at TwitchCon this year. I like talking, I like cons, and I Have Opinions, so of course I said yes. It was this past weekend and I thought I’d just share a few of the highlights with you. 🙂

Note: There is a list of all the streamers I met (and whose gamertags I got) at the bottom of this entry. Please check them out! If I missed you, so sorry, please comment and I’ll add you.

First, I am happy to report that our panel was a smashing success. The description is here, and here’s a VOD of our panel!

Continue reading TwitchCon 2018!

Has The DRAGON SLAYER Trademark Been Slain? (UPDATE 11/28/18)

UPDATE:

The USPTO has retracted its approval to publish and issued a rejection based on failure to function as a trademark. This is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to a trademark registration application. It means the mark can’t be registered even on the Supplemental Register or become a potentially registerable mark if it acquires secondary meaning/acquired distinctiveness. The only way to get around this type of rejection is to argue that the finding of failure to function is wrong, and that is not easy to do. Unless the applicant is spoiling for a long, difficult, and expensive fight, the registration application is probably dead.

ORIGINAL POST:

Back in June, MSE Media, LLC, the management company (I assume) for the rights of bestselling author Michael Scott Earle, filed a trademark registration application for the word mark DRAGON SLAYER. You can see the filing information here:

TSDR Info for “DRAGON SLAYER.”

At the time, there was some controversy, as the author community (especially the Internet/Indie author community) was on High Alert for trademark shenanigans following the “COCKY” word mark lawsuit. However, due to the way trademark registration works, there were a limited number of things that third parties could do at that point. I’ll explain briefly, and then discuss the particulars of the DRAGON SLAYER filing.

Trademarks, as trademark expert Ed Timberlake (of @timberlakelaw and Timberlake Law) is fond of pointing out, are not actually “granted” or “awarded” or “given” by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) or its equivalent agencies in other countries. Trademarks are, essentially, earned. And the way you earn them is by forming an association in the minds of consumers between your product or service, and the trademark. (We usually refer to them collectively as trademarks, although linguistically it’s more correct to call the ones associated with a service “service marks.”) Once that happens, the law in most countries automatically starts to protect consumers by proscribing use of the mark by other people in ways that could create a likelihood of confusion in the marketplace.

Continue reading Has The DRAGON SLAYER Trademark Been Slain? (UPDATE 11/28/18)