Copyright

The news accounts, now 70 years old, offer only fragments of the "ghastly drama" that surrounded the marriage of Mary Kenan Flagler Bingham, "the richest woman in America." She was the widow of Standard Oil co-founder Henry Flagler and her estate was worth between $60 million and $100 million. Her bridegroom was Judge Robert Worth Bingham, a Kentucky lawyer without independent means. Their wedding in 1916 made headlines, even in New York. And so did her mysterious death eight months later.

A federal judge has tossed out Quentin Tarantino's copyright infringement lawsuit against Gawker Media for linking to his leaked, unproduced script for "The Hateful Eight," but the legal battle may be far from over. U.S. District Court Judge John F. Walter granted Gawker's motion to dismiss the suit while also giving Tarantino's legal team until May 1 to amend and refile the contributory copyright complaint, which accused Gawker of disseminating copies of Tarantino's script on its Defamer website and said the company "has made a business of predatory journalism.

Hollywood studios are turning the screws on Kim Dotcom, founder of the once infamous piracy website Megaupload. Several major U.S. studios on Monday filed a lawsuit against Kim Dotcom (a.k.a. Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor) and others associated with Megaupload, alleging that they encouraged and profited from massive copyright infringement of movies and television shows before they were indicted on federal criminal charges and Megaupload was shut down. “When Megaupload.com was shut down in 2012 by U.S. law enforcement, it was by all estimates the largest and most active infringing website targeting creative content in the world,” said Steven Fabrizio, senior executive vice president and global general counsel of the Motion Picture Assn.

WASHINGTON - Confronting a case that could reshape the television broadcast industry, Supreme Court justices sounded conflicted Tuesday over whether an upstart streaming service is violating copyright laws by enabling subscribers to record programs captured over the air and view them later on the Internet. The court's ruling, due by June, could either shut down New York-based Aereo or clear the way for the growing company to continue providing subscribers with a convenient, low-cost way to watch local broadcast channels without paying for cable or satellite service or putting an antenna on a roof.

Unlike last year, people hoping to jazz up their Academy Awards viewing parties this weekend with an oversized statuette resembling Oscar are now out of luck. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has settled a lawsuit it brought against an Edwardsville, Ill.-based events rental company for copyright infringement stemming from the alleged renting and selling of eight-foot statues that looked like the Oscar statuettes. The case against TheEventLine.com and its president, Robert Hollingsworth, was settled late last year and dismissed Nov. 19. In a lawsuit filed March 9 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, the Academy had alleged that Hollingsworth continued to market, sell and rent the eight-foot statues after he'd been notified of the alleged infringement in a letter sent in March 2011.

A federal judge has ruled that Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. John H. Watson, are no longer protected by copyright, and that all elements of the famous sleuth's stories created by the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle before 1923 are now in the public domain. The court case required U.S. District Judge Rubén Castillo to become something of a Sherlock Holmes expert, and in a 22-page ruling issued last week in Chicago, he began by summarizing the four novels and 56 short stories Conan Doyle wrote about the fictional detective: The character first appeared in 1887.

Bruce Stokes of the Council on Foreign Relations made some surprising errors in his commentary about how China ignores U.S. copyright (Opinion, May 26). For example, he states that some movies are available on videocassette in China before they appear on the screen. How? To accomplish this would take a huge conspiracy involving post-production supervisors, processing labs and literally hundreds of technicians. Not likely! What I believe he meant to say was that movies on video often appear in China before the U.S. Regarding the short shrift he gave writers, composers, producers and directors, I can assure you nobody stands for copyrighted property being pirated.

CBS has dropped its copyright infringement lawsuit againstABC's reality series "The Glass House," which the network had contended was a close copy of its"Big Brother" reality show. Executives maintained the low rating of "Glass House" made the suit unnecessary. "The viewers have spoken and delivered the ultimate form of justice against 'The Glass House,' " said the statement from CBS. "As a result, we filed in federal court this morning a voluntary dismissal without prejudice of our claims against ABC. " However, CBS left open the door for further legal action: "We reserve the right to re-file this claim against ABC/"The Glass House" or any other entity, that goes to such shocking lengths to duplicate our copyright material.

Wonderware Corp. in Irvine announced Wednesday that it has reached an out-of-court settlement ending more than two years of legal disputes over copyright issues with a pair of rival software developers. Terms of the settlements between Wonderware, Cyberlogic Technologies Inc. and Intellution Inc. were not disclosed. None of the companies admitted any wrongdoing or liability.

Under pressure from the United States, Thailand amended its copyright law Thursday to tighten control on production of fake designer clothes, books, music tapes and other goods. After days of fierce politicking by opposition politicians, parliament approved by a 183-134 vote an amendment to the 1978 Copyright Act effectively extending its protection to the United States. U.S. Trade Representative Clayton K. Yeutter had set a Dec.

Hollywood studios are turning the screws on Kim Dotcom, founder of the once infamous piracy website Megaupload. Several major U.S. studios on Monday filed a lawsuit against Kim Dotcom (a.k.a. Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor) and others associated with Megaupload, alleging that they encouraged and profited from massive copyright infringement of movies and television shows before they were indicted on federal criminal charges and Megaupload was shut down. “When Megaupload.com was shut down in 2012 by U.S. law enforcement, it was by all estimates the largest and most active infringing website targeting creative content in the world,” said Steven Fabrizio, senior executive vice president and global general counsel of the Motion Picture Assn.

Gawker Media is asking a California federal judge to throw out a lawsuit filed by Quentin Tarantino over his leaked screenplay for "The Hateful Eight," arguing it only facilitated the reading of the unproduced screenplay and didn't enable any copyright infringement. Tarantino sued Gawker for contributory copyright infringement in January, after its Defamer blog published a post titled "Here Is the Leaked Quentin Tarantino 'Hateful Eight' Script" with download links to third-party websites hosting copies of the document.

Two of the nation's preeminent legal experts on copyright law are siding with broadcasters in their legal fight against Aereo, a start-up service that transmits local television signals via the Internet. In a brief filed at the Supreme Court, UCLA School of Law professor David Nimmer and Peter Menell, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law, warned that if Aereo were found to be legal it could "decimate multiple industries. " The broadcasters are hoping that the high court will overturn last year's 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruling that found Aereo's transmissions and recordings are not "public performances" of copyrighted material.

This post has been updated. While Hollywood executives and film stars chatter about who's going to win Oscars, the buzz in geekier circles is focused on a low-budget film that, despite being at the other end of the quality scale from "Gravity" and "12 Years a Slave," could set a worrisome legal precedent. The 13-minute trailer for "Innocence of Muslims," a crude piece of anti-Islamic agit-prop, is best known for triggering outraged protests across the Middle East and northern Africa.

Back in 2010, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig gave a lecture on copyright law. Speaking at a conference for the organization Creative Commons, he used YouTube clips of fans dancing to Phoenix's song " Lisztomania" as an example of proper "fair use" principles. He later uploaded the full lecture, which included the clips, to YouTube.   Liberation Music, the firm that licenses the Phoenix song in Australia and New Zealand, disagreed with Lessig's take. The firm issued a YouTube takedown order , asking that the lecture video be removed, and later threatened their own lawsuit against Lessig.

SAN FRANCISCO - In a ruling that a dissenting judge called "unprecedented," a federal appeals court ordered Google Inc. on Wednesday to take down an anti-Muslim video that an actress said forced her to leave her home because of death threats. Google said it would appeal the ruling, but removed the video, "Innocence of Muslims," from YouTube and other platforms. The video has incited violent Muslim protests and has been banned by several Muslim countries. The 2 to 1 decision by the 9 t h U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the actress who appeared in the film never consented to being in it and her performance may be protected by copyright law. "While answering a casting call for a low-budget amateur film doesn't often lead to stardom, it also rarely turns an aspiring actress into the subject of a fatwa ," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the majority.

Most art piracy cases never reach the courts because infringement is difficult to prove or artists can't afford expensive lawsuits. Admirers of the late Lorser Feitelson's paintings, for example, have noted a similarity between his "lineform" abstractions and the twisted ribbon-like design on Coca-Cola cans, but the likeness has never been legally challenged. Neither has the similarity between one of Matt Mullican's images and the logo on Max Studio clothing.

Warning: Copyright threats on DVDs and TV broadcasts may be misstating the law. A high-tech trade group made that charge Wednesday to the Federal Trade Commission, alleging deceptive trade practices for the scary copyright warnings before movies and during sports broadcasts. The Computer and Communications Industry Assn. said it was trying to protect the public's legal rights from overzealous media companies, which in turn said they were simply trying to protect their content.

Gawker's stock in trade is revealing things about celebrities and other public figures that they'd much rather keep private. And as long as what it prints is true, it's pretty much immune from libel lawsuits. Not so for copyright infringement, though. And though Gawker isn't the most sympathetic outlet, a new lawsuit against the site for linking to an infringing copy of an unreleased screenplay should send chills down the spines of every reporter who writes about copyright issues.

The big television networks have faced all number of challenges in recent years. But they could be done in by something called Aereo. Most people probably haven't heard of Aereo, which has been rolling out its video service for just over a year and still serves only 10 cities, none further west than Salt Lake. But millions will be hearing about it now, because on Jan. 10, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the broadcasters' complaints that Aereo's business dramatically breaches telecommunications and copyright law. The New York start-up offers its subscribers signals from their local over-the-air broadcasters in a way that is either a minor tweak of how they can get those signals on their own (that's Aereo's version)