Termination Rights: Are Original Marvel Illustrators and Writers Entitled to a Piece of Disney’s Profits?
Crystal Broughan, Intellectual Property Attorney Sep 30, 2021 in Copyrights
Currently, Disney faces multiple termination of copyright notices filed on behalf of five comic writers and artists of the original Marvel Comics. The artists (or their heirs) claim that they played pivotal development roles in creating characters like Spider-Man and Iron Man. Even though Disney owns Marvel, these writers and artists want to take back the copyrights for their characters. Bottom line, this means once the creators own the copyright they could receive a percentage […]
Continue ReadingTikTok, Dance Creators, and Copyright Complications
Crystal Broughan, Intellectual Property Attorney Aug 12, 2021 in Copyrights
Even if you do not have an account on TikTok, you have likely heard of the social media platform. After all, it became the most-downloaded app in 2020 after then-President Trump attempted to ban it. Users love the platform because of how easy it is for people to share short videos. One of the most popular genres of videos that people post is dance. In fact, quite a few users create their own dances and […]
Continue ReadingWhat to Know about Copyright Protection for Presentation Materials
Crystal Broughan, Intellectual Property Attorney Jul 29, 2021 in Copyrights
Presentations are given every day to a wide variety of audiences throughout the world. Professional consultants provide presentations on leadership development, handling stress, how to improve sales techniques, financial investments, real estate sales, and insurance as an investment — just to name a few. If the materials in these presentations and the handouts distributed to the audience are original works, the creators of presentations should submit copyright applications to obtain copyright registrations for those original […]
Continue ReadingHow Do You Obtain Permission to Use Someone Else’s Original Copyright Protected Materials?
Crystal Broughan, Intellectual Property Attorney Jul 1, 2021 in Copyrights
Preparing copyright applications for clients can lead to tough questions, such as, “Does this book only contain your original work? Not original work from a third party?” I always review the complete, submitted work that is the subject of a copyright application for photographs, artwork, quotes, or graphics. My goal is to identify if any were created by a third party and inserted in the client’s original work. Sometimes I receive telephone calls from copyright […]
Continue ReadingDo You Make NFTs? What You Need to Know About Copyright Protection
Crystal Broughan, Intellectual Property Attorney May 13, 2021 in Copyrights
What do LeBron James, Kings of Leon, and a hybrid Pop Tart/cat monster have in common? They all comprise pieces of a trending type of art that lives on the internet: NFTs, or “nonfungible tokens.” These digital art pieces cannot be replicated, because they employ blockchain, the same decentralized programming foundation as cryptocurrency. In fact, the two commonly coexist — people commonly pay for NFTs in cryptocurrency. If you create NFTs, all of this likely […]
Continue ReadingWhat in the World Is GatorCheats and Why Did They Just Agree to Pay $2M?
Crystal Broughan, Intellectual Property Attorney Apr 8, 2021 in Copyrights
Even if you do not play video games, you probably know that the video game industry makes a lot of money. It is quite likely that you also have a sense that the content in video games falls under copyright protection. What you might not realize, however, is that cheating at video games is also a huge business… and its legality is highly questionable. Businesses that make money creating various kinds of video game cheats […]
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