Licensing Like a Champion (Can it be an Afterthought?)

December 11, 2018 · by ·

Fall is back, and, in the United States, that means pumpkin-flavored products and (American) football galore. If you have not yet eaten pumpkin-flavored pop-corn, drunk pumpkin-flavored coffee and watched at least one game of football, well, your neighbors probably consider you to be weird.

So grab a pumpkin-flavored cookie and read this blog about a recent Second Circuit decision, Spinelli v. National Football League, No 17-0673 (HT Court House News for the link to the document). The case is about copyright licensing, retroactive and royalty-free licensing and a touch (down) of football.

Image of a football game from the 70's

From the U.S. National Archives

Plaintiffs are seven sports photographers. Defendants are the Associated Press (AP), the National Football League (NFL) and the 32 NFL teams. If you do not know the names of the NFL teams, you can read their complete list in the document (The Falcons! The Steelers! The Forty Niners!)

The photographers filed a copyright infringement suit in 2013 against the NFL and AP in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), claiming that AP had granted the NFL a royalty-free license without permission from the authors of the photographs.

Plaintiffs also argued that the NFL and AP had conspired to restrain trade in the market for commercial licenses of NFL event photographs thus breaching antitrust laws (I will not write about this issue).

Defendants moved to dismiss and the SDNY granted their motion in 2015. Plaintiffs appealed. On September 11, 2018, the Second Circuit remanded the case which is now likely to go to trial.

In order to take and use photographs from an NFL event, one needs to secure a license from the NFL, as such photographs almost always contain NFL trademarks. Getty had the exclusive worldwide right to license NFL’s pictures from 2004 to 2009, and then AP became the NFL’s exclusive licensor.

Plaintiffs had entered into “contributor agreements” with AP which allowed them to access NFL events, and to obtain licenses for the intellectual property contained in the photographs they took at these events. Plaintiffs took thousands of NFL photographs, during games or practices. Some of these pictures feature NFL trademarks, but others did not.

The 2009-2012 NFL-AP agreement

The original agreement between the NFL and AP, which lasted from 2009 to 2012, had granted the NFL a royalty-free license to use “AP-owned” images, but had not extended this license to images taken by non-AP contributors. However a new agreement, entered into in 2012, extended the royalty-free license granted to the NFL to photographs taken by non-AP contributing photographers.

Plaintiffs had indeed provided AP a “perpetual, irrevocable transferable worldwide right and license to reproduce, edit, translate the caption of, prepare derivative works of, publicly perform, publicly display, load into computer memory, cache, store and otherwise use“ their works along with the right to “transfer or sublicense these rights to other entities.” This agreement was lucrative for the Plaintiffs, as AP payed royalties when it licensed one of the works. At issue in this case was whether Plaintiffs had thus allowed AP to grant royalty-free licenses to the NFL.

For the SDNY, copyright law gives copyright owners and their exclusive licensees the right to freely grant a license “after the fact” as they see fit, quoting Wu v. Pearson, 2013 WL 145666, at 4: “[T]here is no legal prohibition to obtaining a retroactive license if it is authorized by the rights holder.” Plaintiffs had argued instead that, citing the 2007 Davis v. Blige Second Circuit decision, that AP could not grant a retroactive license. In Davis, the Second Circuit had rejected retroactive copyright licensing as a way to cure past infringement.

In our case, the Second Circuit found that even though facts in our case were slightly different than the ones in Davis, the court had to come to the same conclusion. The Second Circuit reasoned that Plaintiffs had the right, before the execution of the 2012 AP-NFL agreement, to sue the NFL for copyright infringement. Therefore, if AP could grant a license to the NFL retroactively in 2012, that right would have thus been extinguished, and “[d]oing so was impermissible, irrespective of whether AP had the authority to issue a prospective license to the NFL starting in 2009.”

The SDNY had dismissed their claim because the license Plaintiffs had provided AP was as broad as their own copyright in their photos, and “[n]othing in the license require[d] AP to issue only royalty-bearing sublicense.” For the SDNY, the language of the agreement made clear that the rights granted by Plaintiffs to AP, including the right to sublicense, were “broad and unlimited.”

Player kicking a football to score a point

The case was kicked back to the lower court

However, the Second Circuit found the 2012 contract to be “ambiguous” and recognized that it could be interpreted as limiting the ways AP can sublicense Plaintiffs’ photographs to third parties. The court remanded the case to the lower court. Litigation is not a contact sport. But you must win the last game.

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Icy Refusal to Copyright Frigidaire’s Logo

November 30, 2018 · by ·

The Review Board of the United States Copyright Office (the Board) did not warm up to Electrolux’s arguments that its “Frigidaire Stylized Logo” should be protected by copyright. On August 29, it affirmed the denial of registration.

A logo can be protected as a trademark and can also be protected by copyright, if it is original enough. Several corporate logos are protected by copyright and by trademark.

The Frigidaire logo consists of the word Frigidaire in blue capital letters. Only the “A” differs from the usual way to write the letter A, as it is drawn as a triangle filled with a smaller red triangle. Hardly the stuff Turner Prize dreams are made of.

A photo of a rusty Frigidaire logoBut copyright laws are not snobbish and protect masterpieces and more humble works alike, as long as they are original enough.

Is the word Frigidaire itself protected by copyright?

Frigidaire is a made-up word. The correct word to designate an electric ice box is a refrigerator. I may sound a little pompous writing this phrase, but it is because I am scolding my 15-year old self [make this my 20-year old self] who was stupefied discovering this fact. Of course, being French, I grew up calling the family refrigerator “Le Frigo.” But enough about moi.

Who remembers the copywriter who invented such a famous name. Anybody? We should, as Frigidaire quickly became part of the lexicon. Google Ngram’s viewer informs us that the word appeared in 1920, peaked in 1940, and then dropped steadily in use in English, in use in English fiction, in French, and Spanish, while the word was at its most popular in Italian in the Sixties.

It is a great word, an original word, more original that a logo using a triangle instead of the letter “A.” But my brain must have frozen, as I just remembered that a word cannot be protected by copyright, and I have thus let go the suggestion that the word Frigidaire should be protected by copyright..

Let’s talk a bit about trademark.

Frigidaire is a great word. It could even be some person’s favorite word. Poets and songwriters have used it.

When Nat King Cole sang “I have stopped my heart like an icy Frigidaire, for I need to care for no one, that’s why I’m thru with love…” he (exquisitely) did what every trademark attorney dreads the most, he used a trademark as a generic term.

[Trivia question: which other famous song from the American song book used the then-trademark “cellophane” generically, as a compliment to a paramour to boot? Answer is here].

Frigidaire is such a great name for a refrigerator that it quickly got used for a refrigerator, instead of the generic name, thus becoming a generic trademark. It is now used indifferently, Frigidaire or refrigerator.

“Frigidaire” was registered as a word trademark in 1920 by registrant Frigidaire Corporation of Michigan. This trademark is now dead, by genericide.

As Frigidaire can no longer be protected as a word mark, it can only be protected as a design mark. Indeed, the word Frigidaire in stylized letters is still protected by trademark, in several versions, see here.

Frigidaire, written FRIGIDΔIRE, was registered as a trademark last year. The mark “consists of “FRIGIDAIRE” with triangle “A”. This logo can be a trademark, since what matters is that the logo can serve as an indicator of the origins of the goods. Trademark laws do not care about originality.

But copyright laws do, and this FRIGIDΔIRE logo is not original enough, according to the Board, to be protected by copyright.

The FrigidΔire logo is not original enough to be protected by copyright.

The Board reminded applicant that it does not make aesthetic judgments when assessing whether a work can be protected or not, citing the classic 1903 Bleistein case. But it is lack of originality which froze the application, not aesthetics.

The Board used many of the same arguments they used to deny copyright protection to Log Cabin Blank With Screw Eyes and Cafe Door (see my post about this case here). To resume the argument, Feist requires only a modicum of originality but the work must “embody some creative authorship.” The author can use material and forms which are not protected by copyright, but must do it in such a way that the selection and coordination of these elements “trigger[s] copyright.” As in the Log Cabin case, the board cited § 906 of the Compendium and the Atari case to assert that the combination of simple shapes is protected only if “combined in a distinctive manner indicating some ingenuity.” The Board found that the stylized “A” is a mere “trivial variation on a letter” and is thus not copyrightable, as it does not “possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity”, quoting Feist.

Electrolux, which now owns the Frigidaire brand, has registered the logo at stake as a trademark, and also wanted to register it as a copyright. This is good practice, as intellectual property is valuable and it makes sense to protect it every way one can.

It argued that “the stylized letter “A” represent[ed] a design choice that was made to reflect the attributes of Electrolux home appliance products, including having an eye on the future and being innovative, grounded, and stylish.”

However, logos cannot be protected by copyright if they are not original enough, and the FrigidΔire case should serve as a warning to companies creating a logo: make sure it is original enough to be also protected by copyright.

This post was originally published on The 1709 Blog.

Image is courtesy of Flickr user Debris Field under CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

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Can a Work of Art Created by AI be Protected by Copyright?

November 9, 2018 · by ·
Auction house Christies sold last month for $432,500 a work of art titled 𝒎𝒊𝒏 𝑮 𝒎𝒂𝒙 𝑫 𝔼𝒙 [𝒍𝒐𝒈 𝑫 (𝒙))] + 𝔼𝒛 [𝒍𝒐𝒈(𝟏 − 𝑫(𝑮(𝒛)))], Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy, which was created using AI.

 

It is the work of a Paris-based collective, obvious art, founded by Pierre Fautrel, Gauthier Vernier and Hugo Caselles-Dupré. The work was created using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, more precisely the Generative Adversarial Networks technology invented in 2014 by Ian Goodfellow, which can create images. The name of the work, Edmond de Belamy, is an homage to Ian Goodfellow, whose last name can be translated in French as “Bel ami.”
Obvious art created a program, fed it with information about some 10,000 portraits from the 15th to the 19th Century, and Edmond de Belamy was printed. The whole process is explained on obvious art’s website and also here.

 

The portrait shows a man painted over a black and gray background from which he appears to emerge, dressed in black, with a white collar, in a fashion reminiscent of 17th century Dutch paintings. His features are not precisely lineated and one does not even see his nose. He is looking at us from an angle, and appears to have been painted by large brushstrokes.

 

The collective’s goal was to prove that machines can also be creative, just like humans (see this interview in French). It is an algorithm which created the work. Does that mean that Edmond de Belamy cannot be protected by copyright?

 

Is Edmond de Belamy the new Naruto?

The Naruto case [see here] may give us some clues on how a US court would rule over the copyrightbility of a work created by AI.

Obvious art used the formula of the loss function of the original GAN model as the signature for the painting they created. If a program is the author of the work, then the work cannot be protected by copyright.

 

The U.S. Copyright Office clearly stated in its Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices that a work must be created by a human being to be protected by copyright, and that“[t]he Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants,” giving as an example a work which cannot be protected by copyright a “photograph taken by a monkey.” It could now add “a painting created by AI.”

 

This is not the first time that AI was used to create a painting. In 2016, a team fed a computer data about 346 Rembrandt paintings and the result was a 3-D printed portrait looking just like one Rembrandt could have painted, the “Next Rembrandt.” The fake (or next) Rembrandt was made out of some 148 million pixels and 150GB of rendered data.

 

Ron Augustus, director of SMB Markets for Microsoft, who was part of the “Next Rembrandt” project, said in a video interview (@1:00) that they “used technology and data like Rembrandt used his spades and his brushes to create something new.” This argument suggests that whomever used AI technology as a tool to create a work could be its author, just like Rembrandt. ‘Something new’ is original, and originality is required to be protected by copyright.

 

But even if we consider AI to be a mere tool, it is not a tool like a spade or a brush, as this tool had to be created and could be protected by copyright.

 

Computer programs can be protected by copyright and software, as it is a computer program, can be protected. A software is defined by the copyright Act as “a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result” and U.S. courts use an “abstraction-filtration-comparison test” [see here for example] to find out which elements of a computer program can be protected by copyright.

 

If the tool used to create a work is protected by copyright, does that mean that the work thus created is also protected? Not necessarily, as Section 721.6 of the Compendium specifies that “ownership of the copyright in a work is distinct from ownership of any material object that may be used to create that work. The fact that the author used a computer to write an article, short story, or other nondramatic literary work does not mean that the work is a computer program.”

 

Therefore Edmond de Belamy cannot be protected by copyright. But, wait, there could be another way.

 

AI and Conceptual Art

 

Edmond de Bellamy is not a lone figure, but has relatives, also created using GAN, in fact, he has a whole genealogical tree (see here, here and and here).

 

While Edmond de Belamy may not alone be protected by copyright, it could be argued that obvious art’s project, as an ensemble, could be protected as a work of art. Failing to do so would further jeopardize the complicated relationship between conceptual art and copyright.

 

The portraits created by AI formed a genealogical tree, a fake family complete with made-up names, and could be considered original enough to be protected under Feist as an original compilation. However, a sole portrait is not protected by copyright. Should wannabe buyers of the Bellamy portrait consider buying his whole family?
Photo courtesy of Flickr user MadLab Manchester Digital Laboratory under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
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Filed Under: Art Law, Uncategorized · Tagged: ,

Cultural Appropriation, an Intellectual Property Perspective

October 19, 2018 · by ·
The Agence France Presse posted a video on Twitter in August, which shows that the French fashion house Christian Dior had used traditional embroidery motifs in its pre-Fall 2017 collection  (see here too). The embroideries are originally from the Bihor area in Romania and adorn a traditional garment, the “cojoc binşenesc” (more about it here and here).
Cojoc Embroidery

Romanian Embroidery on a Cojoc

In this particular instance, the community reacted by taking advantage of this publicity and launched a website, Bihor Couture, which sells traditional Bihor garments and accessories. 

 

 I will not comment much on the trademark issues which the choice of ‘Bihor Couture’ could raise, but here are my quick two cents. In the U.S., parody is a defense in a trademark infringement case. If you are interested in this topic, you can read about the recent My Other Bag Second Circuit case here and here.

French trademark law does not have a parody exception, but courts have recognized such a defense, albeit sparingly, when parody was used as a social/political comment (see for instance this case, where the French Supreme Court held in 2008 that article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights protects the right of non-profit Greenpeace to parody the Areva brand).

Can embroideries be protected by copyright?

 

Well yes they can, on both sides of the Atlantic, if they are original enough. Embroidery motifs may, however, be in the public domain, or not original enough to be protected by copyright.

 

In the U.S., embroideries can be considered fabric designs which are copyrightable. The mere fact that embroideries may adorn a piece of garment does not prevent them to be protected by U.S. copyright, even though a garment is an uncopyrightable useful article.

 

Since Star Athletica [see our comment on the case here], an artistic work applied on or incorporated into a garment  may be eligible for copyright protection if it: “(1) can be perceived as a two or three-dimensional work of art separate from the useful article and (2) would qualify as a protectable pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work-either on its own or fixed in some other tangible medium of expression-if it were imagined separately from the useful article into which it is incorporated.”

 

In France, the concept of “Unité de l’Art” prevents French copyright law (droit d’auteur) to differentiate art from mere applied art (art appliqué) such as embroideries.

 

However, traditional embroideries may be in the public domain. The embroideries which inspired Dior may be in the public domain, or they could have been created recently enough to be protected by Romanian law. However, even traditional works in the public domain may soon be protected by intellectual property.

 

Protection of traditional works by moral rights

 

WIPO considers that traditional cultural expressions (TCEs), or “expressions of folklore,” may include handicrafts, and may be protected by copyright if recently created. It also noted that “[i]n many countries and for many indigenous and local communities, the handicraft sector plays a vital social and cultural function and contributes significantly to communal, local and national economies.”

 

WIPO’s Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore will hold its 37th session from August 27 to 31. The Committee published last month draft articles on the protection of traditional cultural expressions, which are part of the session’s agenda and which are aimed to become an international instrument directing member States to better protect TCEs.

 

One of the policy objectives of the instrument would be to “prevent the misappropriation and misuse/offensive and derogatory use/unauthorized use of their traditional cultural expressions.” This is of particular interest for communities which have created designs attracting the attention of fashion companies eager to satisfy the want of their customers for authenticity.  One may remember, for instance, that a U.K. fashion company used a traditional Inuit motif on a sweater.

 

One of the principles stated in the WIPO draft articles acknowledges that “traditional cultures and folklore constitute frameworks of innovation and creativity that benefit Indigenous [Peoples], [local communities] [and nations] / beneficiaries, as well as all humanity.”

 

It also notes “the value of a vibrant public domain and the body of knowledge that is available for all to use, and which is essential for creativity and innovation, and the need to protect, preserve and enhance the public domain.” It would “secure/recognize rights already acquired by third parties and secure/provide for legal certainty and a rich and accessible public domain.”

 

The instrument would direct “Member States [to] the economic and moral rights and interests of beneficiaries in secret and/or sacred traditional cultural expressions….as appropriate and in accordance with national law, and where applicable, customary laws.  In particular, beneficiaries shall enjoy the exclusive rights of authorizing the use of such traditional cultural expressions.” (my emphasis).

 

Therefore, even traditional cultural expressions which are in the public domain may be protected by moral rights, which are perpetual. This would be an interesting development for communities wishing to prevent the use of designs, which are in the public domain, but which they consider sacred.

 

This is certainly worthy of interest at a time when “cultural appropriation” is a hot topic, in many domains. Madonna has been recently criticized for wearing Berber clothes and a choreographer has been criticized for using in one of his works a traditional dance, with dancers in costumes looking like traditional costumes.

 

Could traditional works be one day perpetually protected by moral rights?
This post was first published on The 1709 Blog.

 

Image is courtesy of Flickr user meaduva under a CC BY-ND 2.0 license.
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Filed Under: Copyright, Fashion Law · Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Copyright’s Conceptual Cabin Fever

October 5, 2018 · by ·
Conceptual artist Cady Noland filed a copyright infringement suit last year [see my post on The 1709 Blog here], claiming that, by reconstructing one of her wooden sculptures which had been damaged, a museum had thus infringed her copyright by reproducing her work and had also violated her moral rights, as provided to her by the Visual Artists Rights Act and Section 14.03 of the New York Arts & Cultural Affairs Law.

 

Cady Noland had created in 1990 her “Log Cabin Blank With Screw Eyes and Cafe Door” (the Work), made out of wooden logs. It represents the façade of a log cabin, with one open door and two windows, and “[t]wo U.S. flags are an integral part of the sculpture,” according to the July 2017 complaint. The work was created to be displayed outdoors, and after years exposed to the sun and cold of Berlin, the wood used to create the Work had rotted. 

 Cady Nolan asserted in the 2017 complaint that she “has continuously owned the copyright to the Work.  An application for registration of the copyright to Log Cabin together with the required fee and deposit material was transmitted to the Copyright Office in proper form and registration was refused.  Plaintiff has complied with the requirements for registration of Log Cabin as provided in 17 U.S.C.  § 411(a), and in accordance with said section will be serving notice and a copy of this Complaint on the Register of Copyrights” (my emphasis).

Indeed, the artist had filed an application to register the Work as a sculpture in July 2017, but this was denied the same month, because the work “lacks the authorship necessary to support a copyright claims” and because it “is a useful article… that … does not contain any non-useful design element that could be copyrighted and registered.”

A log cabin can be an iconic motel sign or even conceptual art

Log Cabin or Conceptual Art?

The following month, Noland requested the Review Board to reconsider this decision and to register her work. This time, the Copyright Office considered the work to be a sculpture and not a useful article (indeed, what exactly is the use of a single log wall?), but refused to register it anyway, as it did “not contain a sufficient amount of creativity either elementally or as a whole to warrant registration.”

In December 2017, Noland requested the Review Board of the United States Copyright Office (the Board) to reconsider the Registration Program’s refusal to register her work a second and final time, claiming that the work was original enough to be protected by copyright, and arguing she had made creative choices in order for the work to embody her idea to “construct the front of a house… to showcase the failed promise of the American dream” and that “the selection, arrangement, and combination of elements present in [the] work clearly meet the threshold of creativity required for a work to obtain copyright protection.”

 

On May 25, 2018, the Board affirmed the Copyright Registration Program’s denial to register Cady Nolan’s Log Cabin.
Defendant in the copyright infringement suit filed a motion to dismiss last April and this month Nolan filed an opposition to the motion. Plaintiff in a copyright infringement suit must prove ownership of a valid copyright, and thus the Board denial of copyright registration is likely to influence the outcome of the current lawsuit.

 

Why is Log Cabin not original enough to be protected by copyright? 

A work needs to be original to be protected by copyright. The Copyright Act does not define what is “originality,” but the Supreme Court defined it in Feist as “mean[ing] only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity.” The Board quoted Feist, and also Section 906.1 of the Compendium on “uncopyrightable material,” which explains that “[t]he Copyright Act does not protect common geometric shapes, either in two-dimensional or three-dimensional form.” Such shapes must be combined “in a distinct manner indicating ingenuity” (Atari Games Corp at 883). Indeed, while geometric shapes cannot be protected by copyright, their creative arrangement, if original, can be protected.

 

The Board analyzed Noland’s Work and found that it “does not contain a sufficient amount of original and creative artistic or graphic authorship to sustain a claim in copyright. The Work is a simple representation of a standard log cabin façade with joinery; thus any authorship is de minimis and does not support registration. “

 

Nolan had argued that, while some of its elements are found in architectural work, it is a sculpture. The Board recognized that argument, and agreed that the work is a sculpture. It added, however, that the Work “is a simple expression of rote designs and representations of a log cabin; the fact that it is not functional or useful is irrelevant to that analysis” and concluded that “[t]he Work thus is a standard representation of a log cabin façade, which does not meet the minimum degree of creativity required for copyright protection.”

 

Conceptual art and copyright

Copyright and conceptual art have a somewhat difficult relationship and rooted in the necessity to prove their originality and fixation in a tangible medium of expression.

 

Wildflower Work is such conceptual work of art which has been denied copyright protection. It was a flower garden designed by Chapman Kelley and planted in the eighties in Chicago’s Grant Park In Kelley v. Chicago Park District, the Seventh Circuit found that Wildflower Work was original enough to be protected by copyright, but could not be protected because it “lack[ed] the kind of authorship and stable fixation normally required to support copyright.”

 

The Seventh Circuit explained that:
“recognizing copyright in Wildflower Works presses too hard on these basic principles. We fully accept that the artistic community might classify Kelley’s garden as a work of postmodern conceptual art. We acknowledge as well that copyright’s prerequisites of authorship and fixation are broadly defined. But the law must have some limits; not all conceptual art may be copyrighted.”… A garden’s constituent elements are alive and inherently changeable, not fixed. Most of what we see and experience in a garden — the colors, shapes, textures, and scents of the plants — originates in nature, not in the mind of the gardener.”

 

The district court in Kelley had found the work to be uncopyrightable for lack of originality because its design used simple elliptical shapes. However, the Seventh Circuit found this argument to be “misplaced,” explaining that “an author’s expressive combination or arrangement of otherwise noncopyrightable elements (like geometric shapes) may satisfy the originality requirement.” 

 

In our case, the Board cited Satava v. Lowry, a Ninth Circuit case  which explained that “a combination of unprotectable elements is eligible for copyright protection only if those elements are numerous enough and their selection and arrangement original enough that their combination constitutes an original work of authorship.”

 

Cady Nolan is not yet out of the woods (sorry).

 

This post was originally published on The 1709 Blog.

 

Image is from the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive (no known copyright restriction)
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French and Faux? Balenciaga or JFK Souvenir Shop?

September 28, 2018 · by ·

You may have heard of high and low fashion styling, where we are urged to wear our diamond tiara with a Zara top.  This story is a twist on the theme, as Balenciaga offers you a way to spend some serious money on a leather bag somewhat similar to plastic bags sold in New York City souvenir shops and airport stores. Copyright infringement suit ensued. The case is City Merchandise, Inc., v. Balenciaga America, Inc., 1:18-cv-06748 (SDNY).

City Merchandise, a New York City company designing souvenirs goods had created a plastic bag featuring the New York skyline over a pink sky, and the words NEW YORK CITY towering above the image. This how Plaintiff’s attorney describes it in the complaint, in legal yet poetic prose:

“Design encompasses a collage of portions of recognized NYC landmarks prominently featured in the forefront with several other buildings interspersed therein. The Design also features an airbrushed hot pink sky, accented with clouds. In addition, large, purple, fanciful cursive letters, unevenly bordered in white, float above the skyline. The letters opulently glisten and fittingly read, “New York City”.”

The design was used by Plaintiff on several models, a tote, a coin purse, which Plaintiff started selling in late 2014, early 2015. This season, Balenciaga sold a bag and a hoodie, featuring a New York skyline over a pink sky, and the words NEW YORK CITY in a font in large cursive letters. City Merchandise deemed these goods to be infringing and filed a copyright infringement suit in the Southern District of New York against Balenciaga.

Is it copyright infringement?

City Merchandise’s design is registered with the Copyright Office. It is certainly original enough to be protected by copyright (remember, one only needs a “modicum” of originality for a work to be protected by copyright).

Featuring landmark buildings on a design, such as the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building and the Freedom Tower, along with the Statue of Liberty (technically in New Jersey harbor, but still a New York symbol) is not original per se, but the way the buildings are placed, the use of a bright pink sky, the fanciful font used for NEW YORK CITY, all make the design original enough to be protected by copyright.

Balenciaga’s design features the same buildings, but shown from different angles, and arranged in a somewhat different way: for instance, the Statue of Liberty is at the left in Balenciaga’s design, whereas it is featured at the right of Plaintiff’s design.

Plaintiffs claim that the “total concept and feel” between its original design and Balenciaga’s are identical. Courts in the Second Circuit apply an “ordinary observer test to determine if two works are substantially similar, but apply a “more discerning test” if works have both protectible and unprotectible elements or if, as in our case, copying is not exact. Judges then mustn’t dissect the works into separate components and compare only copyrightable or similar elements, but must instead compare the allegedly infringing design’s “total concept and overall feel’” with that of the original design.

Could Balenciaga assert fair use as a defense? Interestingly, the fourth fair use factor, the effect on the market, would likely be in Defendant’s favor, as using the protected design on goods sold in the luxury category would indeed have effect on the market, but a positive one (I will look for the original bag next time I am at JFK!).

The economic purpose of copyright

You may remember Balenciaga offering for sale its own version of the blue Ikea bag, and Ikea’s humorous response. One of Plaintiff’s exhibits, an article about this episode explains that Balenciaga also reproduced in leather a colorful Thai laundry bag originally made out of plastic.

Plaintiff’s bags retail from $19.99 to $5.99, while buying Balenciaga’s versions will set you backfrom $500 to $2,000. Does Plaintiff lose its economic incentive to create a design if a third party use it to make a more expensive version? Copyright law does not care about the price of the object, and a Van Gogh is protected as well as a pattern used for airplane interiors.

Balenciaga saved costs by not having to create the design. It probably did not copy the design to save money, to “free ride”, but more likely to comment on “what makes fashion fashion”: is it the design, or is fashion and style in the eye of the beholder?  After all, Balenciaga head designer is Demna Gvasalia, who became famous thanks to his Vetement brand, which once famously sold once a DHL tee-shirt.

Balenciaga seems to use now tourist goods to comment on fashion: it currently sells a Paris sweatshirt, resembling those found at Parisian tourist shops and showed in its Fall 2018 a model wearing a World Food Program sweat shirt and fanny pack. Reverse snobbism?  Copyright infringement? Or both?

This post first appeared on The 1709 Blog.

 

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Filed Under: Copyright, Fashion Law, Southern District of New York · Tagged: ,

Not every pattern is protected by copyright, even if creating it involved many choices

January 8, 2018 · by ·

The Review Board of the U.S. Copyright Office (the Board) recently reviewed a second request by T.W.N. Industries (TWN) for reconsideration of the Registration Program’s previous denial to register two of its patterns. On October 25, 2017, the Board again denied registration to one of the patterns, Gold Wood, but granted registration to the Staggered Carbon Pattern.

TWN’s patterns are designed to be used by applying them to an object, such as an airplane interior for example.

Copyright Office

The Board described the two patterns as such:

“Staggered Carbon is a geometric pattern consisting of repeating rectangular bands of different sizes, shapes, and textures, arranged in a woven pattern. The bands are two distinct gray-colored patterns. One band is dark gray with vertical lines, and the other band is light gray with darker gray lines.

Gold Wood is a two-dimensional graphic design consisting of a repeating pattern of striated gold and cream vertical lines, made to resemble a light wood grain. “

The U.S. Copyright Office had originally denied in September 2016 copyright registration to both patterns, informing TWN that they lacked the minimum amount of creative pictorial, graphic or sculptural authorship necessary for a work of visual arts to be protected by copyright.

 TMW then asked the Copyright Office to reconsider its refusal, and  explained the creative process used for both patterns, which both necessitates the use of up to three layers within Photoshop, and were hand-drawn using different brushes and strokes.The Copyright Office again denied registration, as “the elongated rectangular bands” which made up the Staggered Carbon pattern “are a common and familiar shape” and the lines making up the Gold Wood pattern were also “a common and familiar shape” and thus could not be protected by copyright. The Copyright Office also found that the Gold Wood’s features were not “combined in any way that differentiates them from their basic shape and design components,” and were a “simple configuration” not protectable by copyright as “the work as a whole consists of vertical lines in shades of gold and cream.”

TMW asked the Copyright Office to reconsider its refusals for a second time, as allowed by 37 C.F.R. § 202.5 (c), claiming that both works were original enough to be protected by copyright, which bears the question: what is originality under U.S. copyright law?

What is originality under U.S. copyright law?

Under 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), U.S. copyright protects only “original works of authorship.” The threshold for a work to be original is, however, quite low. As explained by the Supreme Court in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc. , “[t]he sine qua non of copyright is originality. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author. … Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity.”

Thus two cumulative conditions are necessary for a work to be protected by copyright:

–          It must have been independently created by the author and

–          It must possess at least some minimal degree of creativity

A combination of unoriginal elements can be original enough to be protected by copyright

The Board noted that [s]ome combinations of common or standard design elements may contain sufficient creativity with respect to how they are juxtaposed or arranged to support a copyright… [but that] not every combination or arrangement will be sufficient to meet this test.”

It quoted the 2003 Satawa v. Lowry 9th Circuit case, where the court explained that, while

“a combination of unprotectable elements may qualify for copyright protection… not … any combination of unprotectable elements automatically qualifies for copyright protection. Our case law suggests, and we hold today, that a combination of unprotectable elements is eligible for copyright protection only if those elements are numerous enough and their selection and arrangement original enough that their combination constitutes an original work of authorship.”

The Board also quoted § 906.1 of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices on Common Geometric Shapes, which explains that “the U.S. Copyright Office will not register a work that merely consists of common geometric shapes unless the author’s use of those shapes results in a work that, as a whole, is sufficiently creative.”

Staggered Carbon is original enough to be protected by copyright

The Board found that “the combination of elements in Staggered Carbon – namely the different textures on the bands, as well as their arrangements – exhibits copyrightable authorship,” and was original enough to be protected, quoting Feist, where the Supreme Court held that only a ‘modicum’ of creativity is necessary for a work to be original.

However, only the “specific combination of textures” created by TWN are protected by copyright, not the “standard designs and other unoriginal elements.”

Gold Wood is not original enough to be protected by copyright

But even though the Board recognized that Gold Wood had been independently created, it was not creative enough to be protected by copyright, as “it consists of simple, minor variations on common shapes arranged in an obvious and uniform manner.” The Board explained further that Gold Wood “is made up of only a very few elements (monochromatic lines in a few shades of gold” arranged in an unoriginal manner (densely and with only minor and repeating variations throughout the pattern).” As explained in § 313.4(J) of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, “a work consisting of a simple combination of a few familiar symbols or designs with minor linear or spatial variations, either in two-dimensional or three-dimensional

form, cannot be registered.”

TWN argued that it had to make “specific choices from endless alternatives of shapes” to create Gold Wood. But the Board explained that “it is not the possibility of choices that determines copyrightability, but whether the resulting expression contains copyrightable authorship.”

Image is courtesy of Flicker user Tony Webster Under a CC BY2.0 license.

This post was first published on The 1709 blog.

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Does a French copyright smell anything?

January 4, 2018 · by ·

The FIAC, the international fair of contemporary art, just ended in Paris. Its visitors were able to visit a glass cube, the OSNI, placed on top of the Pavilion of the Palais de Tokyo. OSNI stands for Objet Sentant Non Identifié, ‘Unidentified Scented Object’ and was created by Mathilde Laurent, a perfumer for Cartier, along with Munich climate engineers Transsolar.

Visitors entering the cube were able to go up a staircase through a cloud of the Cartier L’Envol (The Flight) perfume. The cloud is clearly seen to viewers outside OSNI. The fact that the perfume can be seen is as important as it can be smelled.

This installation led French magazine Télérama to ask the question: can perfume be a work of art? Modernist called it “[a] true olfactory and immersive artistic work that presents a completely new way of using smell as a medium of creation.”

Wallpaper quotes Mathilde Laurent as saying “I’m not an artist…but…I feel that to create a piece like this is our duty as a house because it’s important that we sustain olfactory art like all others.”

Could OSNI be a work of art? Is there such thing as olfactory art?

Perfume is not protected by French copyright.

Even though article L.112-1 of the Intellectual Property Code clearly provides that its provisions “ protect the rights of authors on all works of the mind, regardless of genre, form of expression, merit or destination,” perfumes are not protected by French copyright, the droit d’auteur. The Cour de Cassation, France’s highest civil court, ruled in 2008 that “the fragrance of a perfume, which proceeds from the simple implementation of a know-how, does not constitute the creation of a form of expression that can benefit from the protection of copyright”. Therefore, L’Envol is not protected by copyright.

However, OSNI is way more than a perfume. It is an art installation, with which visitors are interacting.

Does France protect performance art?

OSNI’s visitors were able to go up and down the staircase inside the cube, and were seen from outside. Were they part of the performance? Were their reactions to the scented air part of the performance?

France recognizes that an artistic performance may be protected, not by copyright law, however, but by the right in one’s image. Reproductions of an artistic performance, such as photographs taken of it, are, however, protected by the droit d’auteur. In that case the performance artist and the photographer are co-authors, Paris Court of Appeals, 4th Chamber B, December 3, 2004.

Is the perfume an element of the protected work, the cube?

If perfume can not be protected as a scent, could it be protected as a work of art? The perfume is clearly seen here, and can be smelled only if one is inside OSNI. Viewers from outside cannot smell it, but they can see the way the cloud of perfume moves inside the cube.

The cube can be considered a sculpture, and, as such, protected by the droit d’auteur. The scent is part of it and thus protected as an element of the sculpture, but still does not gain individual protection. However, one could imagine that if Cartier were to sell OSNI to an art collector, who would then replace the scent with the one of his favorite aftershave, this would be copyright and droit moral infringement, and would conjure the issue of whether perfume is protected by the droit d’auteur out of the (crystal) bottle.

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Tattoo Copyright Infringement Suit Dribbles On

November 14, 2017 · by ·

Readers of this blog may remember that Solid Oaks Sketches filed a copyright infringement suit against Take-2 Software, the maker of the NBA 2K video game, claiming that its reproduction of several tattoos worn by famous basketball players was copyright infringement. The case is still ongoing in the Southern District of New York, and defendants filed last August a motion for judgment on the pleadings, where they argue that the use was fair use. HT to the Hollywood Reporter.

Solid Oaks bought the copyright for the tattoos of Eric Bledsoe, Lebron James, and Kenyon Martin, which were created by several tattoo artists. These players appear in the NBA 2K game, complete with their tattoos. Solid Oaks claims this is copyright infringement. Take-2 argues that the use is de minimis and fair use.

A real-life depiction

The tattoos “only appear on the players on which they were inked in real life, not other real-world players or fictional characters” (p. 13). Indeed, the NBA 2K game, which is updated every year, depicts over 400 current and retired NBA players “realistically. …These depictions have realistic facial and physical features… They wear jerseys and sportswear with the numbers, colors and logos of their teams. The game even depicts NBA-branded socks” (p.9).

The tattoos at stake were each created specifically for the players. As explained in the motion, “[e]ach tattoo was created as a custom tattoo intended only for the player on which it was inked… Thus, they are imbued with special meaning for the players. For instance, Solid Oak admits that “Child Portrait Tattoo Artwork” depicts LeBron James’s son… Similarly, “330 and Flames Tattoo Artwork” depicts the number 330, which is the area code for Mr. James’s hometown” (p. 12).

Defendant argues that Plaintiffs “seek to hinder the ability to depict people as they appear in real life” (p.6), and that Plaintiff is contending that these famous basketball players must now seek its permission each time they appear in public, in films, or when being photographed.

Use is de minimis

Defendant is arguing that the use of the protected work is de minimis. “[T}rivial copying does not constitute actionable infringement” Newton v. Diamond, 388 F.3d 1189, 1193.

There are 400 players available in the video game, and so the tattoos only appear when the three players featuring the tattoos which copyright is owned by plaintiff appear in the game. Also, the tattoos appear very small in the game and thus are very difficult to see. For Defendant’s the tattoos “are just one of the myriad of elements that makeup NBA 2K” (p.13).

Use is fair use

Defendant is also arguing that it “is not a rival tattooist that has replicated a creative design and inked it on a new person. Rather, its use is completely different in a massive, highly creative video game featuring a virtual world that only uses player tattoos to realistically capture how the players actually look. Each of the factors that courts consider supports a finding of fair use.”

Defendant reviewed each of the four fair use factors and argued that each of the factors is in its favor.

The first factor, the purpose and character of the use, is in Take-Two’s favor because it “uses the Tattoos for a different purpose than that for which they were originally created. While the Tattoos originally were created as the NBA players’ self-expression, Take-Two uses them merely to replicate how the players appear in real life.”

The second factor, the nature of the copyrighted work, should also be in Defendant’s favor because “Take-Two uses them to depict the world accurately.”

The third factor, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, should be in Defendant’s favor because the “use was reasonable given that its purpose was to depict real life accurately, and using any less of the Tattoos would defeat that purpose.”

The fourth fair use factor, the effect of the use upon the potential market, should be in Defendant’s favor because Plaintiff “admitted that it is contractually prohibited from inking the Tattoos on other people, meaning that Take-Two’s use cannot harm that market.”

What about right of publicity?

This is a copyright infringement suit and the players are not parties in the suit. However, one could imagine that they could file a suit against the owner of the copyright of their tattoos for tortious interference in contractual relations, if not owning the copyright of their tattoos would prevent them from licensing their likeness. On the other hand, one can argue that the owner of the copyright has the right to be financially compensated if the work is reproduced, especially for in a commercial venture.

These players are celebrities, but our likeness is more and more used for marketing purposes. A few thousand followers on social media may land us all a lucrative marketing deal. If we sports tattoos but do not own their copyright, should we secure a license before posting selfies? As Jack London once said [on Twitter]: Show me a man with a tattoo and I’ll show you a man with an interesting copyright license.

Image is courtesy of Flickr user Carlos 90 under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

This blog post was first published on The 1709 Blog.

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Athletes’ Right of Publicity Claim Preempted by Copyright Act

November 9, 2017 · by ·

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on 5 April 2017 that the Copyright Act preempted the California right of publicity claims of Plaintiffs, former college athletes whose photographs are part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) library of images license online by Defendant. The case is Maloney v. T3Media, 15-55630.

Plaintiffs played on the Catholic University basketball team from 1997 to 2001, which won the 2001 Men’s Division III NCAA championship game. Defendant T3Media entered into an agreement with NCAA in 2012 to store, host and license the images in the NCAA photo library. The NCAA runs 90 championships in 24 sports across 3 divisions, and its library contains thousands of photographs of championship games, including some taken during the 2001 Men’s Division III championship game in which Plaintiffs participated.

T3Media sold non-exclusive licenses online for two years that allowed users to download copies of the NCAA photographs for personal use. Plaintiffs contended that such action was a violation of their California statutory right of publicity, California Civil Code § 3344, California common law right of publicity, and a violation of California Unfair Competition Law.

They filed a putative class action suit in June 2014 in the U.S. Central District Court of California on behalf of current and former NCAA athletes whose names, images and likeness had been used without their consent by Defendant for purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the purchase of these photographs.

The two-steps of an anti-SLAPP analysis

Defendant moved for a special motion to strike under California anti-SLAPP statute, Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16, which aims to prevent strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP). Courts follow two-steps when assessing an anti-SLAPP motion to strike: first the moving defendant must show that plaintiff’s suit arises from an act in furtherance of defendant’s right to free speech, as protected by the First Amendment. The second part of the assessment shifts the burden to plaintiff who must demonstrate a probability of prevailing on any of her claims.

T3Media had argued that the photographs at stake, and their captions, had been published in a public forum in connection with a matter of public interest. The district court agreed, finding that the photographs “fell within the realm of an issue of public interest” (District Court, at 1134).

This shifted the burden to Plaintiffs to demonstrate a reasonable probability of prevailing on any of their claims. Defendant claimed three affirmative defenses: (1) Plaintiffs’ claims were preempted by federal copyright law, (2) were barred under the First Amendment, and (3) California right of publicity law exempts from liability use of likeness in connection with any news, public affairs, or sports broadcast or account.

The district court did not address the last two defenses as it found that Plaintiffs’ claims were preempted by the Copyright Act, because Plaintiffs asserted rights that fell within the subject matter of copyright, and granted Defendant special motion to strike. Plaintiffs appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed.

As Plaintiffs had conceded that their suit arose from acts in furtherance of T3Media’s right to free speech, the Ninth Circuit only examined whether Plaintiffs indeed had demonstrated a reasonable probability of prevailing on their claims, and found they had not met that burden, as the Copyright Act preempted their claims.

The copyright preemption two-part test

Section 301 of the Copyright Act provides that common law or statutory state laws are preempted by rights “equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright.” Courts in the Ninth Circuit use a two-part test to determine whether a state law claim is preempted the Copyright Act: the courts first decide if the subject matter of the state law is within the subject matter of copyright, and then determine if the rights asserted under state law are equivalent to the exclusive rights of the copyright holders, as determined by Section 106 of the Copyright Act. Parties only argued about the first part of the test.

The right of publicity claim is not preempted if its basis is the use of a likeness

Plaintiffs argued that their right of publicity claim was not preempted by the Copyright Act because publicity right claims protect the persona of an individual, which cannot be fixed in a tangible medium of expression (p. 12). They relied on Downing v. Abercrombie & Fitch, where the Ninth Circuit held that “the content of the protected right must fall within the subject matter of copyright” for the Copyright Act to preempt the state claim (Downing at 1003). Plaintiffs reasoned that their likeness is not with the subject matter of copyright and thus their state claim cannot be preempted by the Copyright Act.

Defendants argued that Plaintiffs’ likeness had been captured in an artistic work and had not been used on merchandise or in advertising. Indeed, the Ninth Circuit noted that “the “core” of the publicity right is the right not to have one’s identity used in advertising” (p. 13). The court of appeals concluded “that a publicity-right claim is not preempted when it targets non-consensual use of one’s name or likeness on merchandise or in advertising. But when a likeness had been captured in a copyrighted artistic visual work and the work itself is being distributed for personal use, a publicity-right claim interferes with the exclusive rights of the copyright holder, as is preempted by section 301 of the Copyright Act“ (p. 13)(emphasis of the Court).

The Ninth Circuit distinguished its Downing case from the case at stake, as the right of publicity claim in Downing is not about the publication of the photograph, but its use: Abercrombie used the surfer’s likeness in the catalog and had also sold reproductions of the tee-shirts worn by them in the photograph. The Ninth Circuit concluded that If the basis of the right of publicity claim is the use of a likeness in a photograph, the right of publicity claim is not preempted by copyright (p. 17).

When is a likeness misused in a work protected by copyright?

Therefore, the “crux of the issue” was whether the basis of the publicity-right claim was indeed to defend Plaintiff against a misuse of their likeness by Defendant. The court reasoned that Section 301 does not distinguish among different types of work protected by copyright, and that the pertinent issue was the way the likeness was used, not the type of the copyrighted work. In Downing, the basis of the publicity-right claim was not the publication of the photograph, but its use to advertise Abercrombie’s products and the creation of tee-shirts similar to those worn by Plaintiffs in the photograph, which were commercial exploitation of Plaintiff’s likeness (p. 19).

The Ninth Circuit noted further that it held in 2006, in Laws v. Sony Music Entertainment, Inc., that “federal copyright law preempts a claim alleging misappropriation of one’s voice when the entirety of the allegedly misappropriated vocal performance is contained within a copyrighted medium” (Laws at 1141). The Ninth Circuit also cited its Jules Jordan Video, Inc. v. 144942 Canada Inc. 2010 case, where it ruled that federal copyright law preempts a claim alleging misappropriation of one’s name and persona based entirely on the misappropriation of DVDs of movies in which plaintiff performed and of which he owned the copyright. Plaintiff had objected to the use of his likeness on the covers of counterfeit DVDs, which the Ninth Circuit found to be “still shots” of the performance protected by copyright. The Ninth Circuit reasoned that Plaintiff claim was a copyright claim, not a claim that his likeness has been used on an unrelated product or in advertising. For the Ninth Circuit, a likeness embodied in a work protected by copyright is misused if it is used on an unrelated product or in advertising.

Why did Plaintiffs’ claim fail

Plaintiffs’ attorney argued at the hearing that Defendant was selling the photographs “as poster art, as desktop backgrounds, as digital goods” (video at 11:36). This is an interesting argument, as the Ninth Circuit attaches great importance to the type of use of the likeness. However, it is the consumers who are choosing how to use the images, within the rights provided to them by the license, not the Defendant.

The District Court explained that ruling in favor of Plaintiffs “would destroy copyright holders’ ability to exercise their exclusive rights under the Copyright Act, effectively giving the subject of every photograph veto power over the artist’s rights under the Copyright Act and destroying the exclusivity of rights the Copyright Act aims to protect” (District Court at 1138).

Plaintiff’s attorney recognized during the hearing that non-commercial use of the photos would be acceptable (video at 13:36). When asked by the judges to give an example of non-commercial use, he suggested editorial use, in a student newspaper or a national newspaper. While the Court did thus not address the issue of free speech, several media organizations filed an amici curiae brief in support of Defendant, to ensure that “the right of publicity is not transformed into a right of censorship—one that can be used to prevent the dissemination of matters of public importance” (amici curiae brief p. 9).

This post has been first published on the TTLF Newsletter on Transatlantic Antitrust and IPR Developments published by the Stanford-Vienna Transatlantic Technology Law Forum.

Image is courtesy of Flickr user Tom Woodward under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

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