The Copyright Office released a report on March 15, 2009 which provided for increases in several fees, citing rising labor costs and current budget constraints. While the cost of basic online copyright registration (eCO) for most types of works remains the same, the cost of registering a copyright via a 2D barcode application has increased [...]

The federal District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan found on Wednesday that an Ypsilanti, MI copy shop was directly liable (as opposed to contributorily liable) for copyright infringement, by allowing students to copy course packs on its own photocopy machines.  Blackwell Publishing Group, Inc. v. Excel Research Group, LLC  (Docket No. 07-12731, ED [...]

The Copyright Office has proposed changes to the mandatory deposit requirements for copyright registration for online-only works — a huge category which encompasses websites, blogs, online journals and publications, and online photo archives.   While they vary for each category of copyrightable work, the mandatory deposit rules (37 CFR 202) typically require a copyright owner to [...]

Here’s a brief update to the copyright controversy created by the text-to-speech function of the Amazon Kindle 2:  I was right. Just a few days later, Amazon changed course, announcing that it will allow authors and publishers to decide on a book-by-book basis whether or not to allow text-to-speech functionality. Apart from making nice and [...]

The Kindle 2 released by Amazon last month is thinner and faster and has access to an increasing number of book titles. So popular that it flew off the shelves last Christmas despite the economic downturn, Kindle 2 continues to revolutionize the e-book and traditional publishing industries. One of the latest features of the Kindle [...]

RDR Books, based in Muskegon, Michigan, won’t be publishing Steven Vander Ark’s much-anticipated “Harry Potter Lexicon.” Not any time soon, and not any time. A US District Court judge in Manhattan has issued a permanent injunction against publication of the work, finding that it infringes copyrights in the popular Harry Potter series of children’s novels. [...]

You can download a copy of the judge’s Opinion and Order in Warner Brothers Entertainment and J.K. Rowling v. RDR Books here at Arborlaw (PDF). Many thanks to Dineen Pashoukos Wasylik for pulling this down off PACER.

There’s a fascinating discussion over at the AdamsDrafting blog about we lawyers and the language we use to draft software license agreements. The article dissects the contract language which has evolved and which we routinely use in licensing software. Here are some of the questions being discussed: Is a license the entire contract, or is [...]

After hundreds of comments were received asking him to restore the blog archives, William Patry restored the public archives of the Patry Copyright Blog.  Patry’s blog contains over 800 articles on copyright case law, copyright legislative developments, and strategic approaches to contemporary copyright-related legal situations.  I highly recommend Patry’s blog — it’s required reading if [...]

William Patry, one of the most well-known and nationally respected copyright practitioners, has explained his reasons for terminating his long-standing Patry Copyright Blog in a final post: http://williampatry.blogspot.com/ Patry cites the “depressing state of copyright law” and the direction of recent copyright law developments as among his personal and professional reasons for not continuing the [...]