HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

News reports in recent weeks have revealed how disputes over the ownership of certain critical IP may derail eBay’s $1.9 billion deal to sell a stake in the well-known internet communications company Skype.  In the latest development companies owned by the founders of Skype filed additional lawsuits last week against eBay and its future investors. At the heart of the dispute is the peer-to-peer technology called “global index” (“GI”) that is critical to Skype’s success.  Somewhat surprisingly, the GI technology, which was developed by Skype’s founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, is not owned by eBay or Skype.  Rather it is owned by Joltid Ltd., a company controlled by Friis and Zennstrom.  Continue Reading »

In a decision applauded by webcasters and lamented by the recording industry, the Second Circuit ruled last week that individualized radio stations–such as those offered by LAUNCHcast and Pandora–are not “interactive services” under the DMCA, freeing the webcasters from the potentially massive financial burden of having to pay licensing fees to record labels for the transmission of sound recordings as part of their services.  The decision was the first by a federal court of appeals to examine the hotly-debated issue.

The suit, originally filed in 2001 by several labels owned by Sony BMG, including Arista, Bad Boy and Zomba, alleged that LAUNCHcast, a webcasting service run by Yahoo’s Launch Media unit, which enables users to create “stations” that play songs within a particular genre or similar to a particular artist or song, violated provisions of the DMCA that required payment of licensing fees for the use of sound recordings in an “interactive” service.”  Continue Reading »

A group of retired players recently filed a class action suit (Dryer et al. v. National Football League) against the NFL claiming infringement and unauthorized use of their identities and likenesses to promote the NFL and sell NFL-related products without compensation.  

This is yet another in a long list of cases brought by former athletes from the NFL, MLB, and NCAA seeking limits on the right to exploit players’ likenesses. In fact, just last year, a number of retired NFL players won a class action lawsuit against the NFL Players Association, arguing that the union conspired with Electronic Arts to use their likenesses in the Madden video game series without proper compensation, in which the retired players earned a $26 million settlement. Continue Reading »

Since Facebook launched its Facebook Usernames initiative in mid-June, over 6 million unique individuals have registered usernames for their personal profiles, and over 15,000 usernames have been registered for Facebook Pages as well, which are commonly used by businesses and other organizations.  In many ways, the program looks like a proprietary domain name registration system.  However, when we read that Facebook is claiming ownership over every username, an assertion attributed to a company spokesman, we realized that Facebook is not acting like a domain name registrar.  We also wondered about the legal basis of such a claim.

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Joint ownership of copyrights is a tricky issue in any transaction.  It is one confronted regularly in digital media deals where rights in the underlying content are often owned by more than one person and licenses are granted retroactively.  Recent decisions in the Second and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have caused tremendous concern about the eroding rights of copyright co-owners.  In Davis v. Blige, the Second Circuit held that copyright co-owners cannot unilaterally issue retroactive licenses.  And in Sybersound v. UAV Corp., , the Ninth Circuit held that a copyright co-owner cannot grant an exclusive license without the consent of all the other co-owners.  The combined effect of these decisions has been described as the “death of divisibility” in copyright law.  These decisions threaten to pose considerable difficulties for anyone looking to acquire rights in a copyright that is owned by more than one individual.     Continue Reading »