There’s no one who hasn’t awkwardly stood around their birthday cake while people sing "Happy Birthday to You". It’s the world’s most famous song, sung to millions each year. And this six-word set of lyrics with a simple melody is protected by copyright.
In 1868, two Hill sisters from Kentucky composed a song called "Good Morning to All" (now known as the tune of "Happy Birthday"), which went like:
Good morning to you,
Good morning to you,
Good morning, dear…
United States Trade Representative (USTR) ordered an Out of Cycle Review (OCR) for India in October. While the USTR insists that the aim of this exercise is to provide constructive feedback to India in order to improve its IP protection and enforcement, many in India are not happy about this move. Not only has the government criticized this move, but also refused to participate in it arguing that the US laws are not applicable to India. Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Commerce…
Here is the next post in the series of Student Blog Contest.
The Internet is often considered the Wild West of laws; People believe that laws that exist offline do not apply online, or there exist different rules of behaviour. So when you tap out a tweet and hit send, putting it in public domain, can you sue if it gets copied?
Short answer: No.
Long answer? It’s complicated. Copyrighting a tweet is extremely hard, for various reasons. Reporting on…
Laws alone cannot eliminate copyright infringements. For copyright law to take its course, there have to be effective detection of infringements and identification of infringers. Furthermore, as with any property rights, owners of copyrighted content have to take certain measures to protect their copyrights before expecting law enforcement to aid them. Digital Rights Managements and ETMs are such measures a copyright owner is expected to take in order to protect his copyrights in the digital world. The term Digital Rights…
On March 10, 2015, a panel of eight jurors of a California Federal Court found the artists Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams guilty of copyright infringement in a plagiarism suit filed by the heirs of artist Marvin Gaye, alleging that the 2013 hit “Blurred Lines” by Thicke and Williams was a rip off of Gaye’s 1977 song “Got To Give It Up”.
‘Blurred Lines’, written and performed by Robin Thicke, T I and Pharrell Williams, was released on March 26,…
Since the dawn of internet, the technological development has been exponential, leading to digitisation of almost all possible activities as from tablets and phones to watches, glasses, TVs and even refrigerators become “smarter”. The laws such as Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), enacted to focus on the rise of digital era, are unable to completely match the pace of this development. Recently, the US Copyright Office initiated the sixth triennial rule-making process which has been accepting petitions since then. Electronic…
A while ago, Google closed its operations in Spain, in response to the new copyright law which has made it mandatory for Google, Yahoo and other news aggregators to pay licensing fee to all news publishers for using their stories or snippets in Google news.
The regulation, expected to come into effect in 2015, will deal with websites that share pirated content. As per the law, Spanish Government will have the authority to penalize websites up to $750,000 for directing…
Dear Sinapse Readers (entertainment and copyright law enthusiasts),
In 2014, the authors of Sinapse got together to bring to its readers analytic data in the form of 'Series' posts. We have put together all the entertainment and copyright law related information for you, so that you're able to assimilate all of it at one go! But don't stop there. Read the whole thing if you want to be thoroughly informed:
1. Licensing & Merchandising in Copyright Law …
Dear Readers,
The information age brought with it mounds of new perspectives and facts. But is it enough that it's all out there! We do want to be able to know a whole lot by reading very little. So, we bring you a quick look at all the major IP-related happenings of 2014. Copyright Law:
1. CJEU rules – ISP’s can be made to block Illegal Download access
As an endorsement to European Union’s anti-piracy policies, the European Court of Justice ruled on…
Following the recommendations given in independent report by Professor Ian Hargreaves in 2011, the UK Government had come up with several changes in the copyright law covering aspects of fair dealing for accessible formats for the disabled, research and education, public administration, parody and personal copies for private use. Of these, the regulations allowing personal copies of legally-bought music to be made for private use, under exceptions to the copyright law, are facing strong resistance from the UK music industry.…