Copyright Infringement

It can be a dog-eat-dog world in social games. Electronic Arts Inc. on Friday filed a copyright infringement suit against Zynga Inc., alleging that the social gaming company's "The Ville" misappropriated EA's game "The Sims Social. " EA's lawsuit was just the latest in a string of bad news for Zynga. The San Francisco social gaming company was hit Monday with a shareholder lawsuit claiming that Zynga investors and executives — including its chief executive, Mark Pincus — had improperly cashed out $516 million in company stock in April, three months before Zynga posted disappointing earnings that sent its shares plummeting 37% in one day. In a blog post explaining EA's lawsuit, Lucy Bradshaw, head of Maxis, the EA-owned studio that created "Sims Social," outlined why EA contends that Zynga "ripped off" its intellectual property.

Curb Records is making a federal case out of its beef with country star Tim McGraw, moving its 2-year-old complaint in state court in Tennessee to the federal level in arguing that he breached his contract with Curb and signing in 2011 with Big Machine Records. Curb's suit alleges copyright infringement and breach of contract, Billboard reports. The case began in 2011 with a disagreement between McGraw and Curb over his album “Emotional Traffic,” which he said completed his contractual commitment to Curb, the label for whom he'd recorded for the previous 20 years.

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.

In an epic clash between old and new media, Google Inc.'s video website YouTube has scored another huge victory in the long-running skirmish over copyright infringement brought by television giant Viacom Inc. A federal judge in New York on Thursday ruled that YouTube had not violated Viacom's copyright even though users of the popular online site were allowed to post unauthorized video clips from some of Viacom's most popular shows, including Comedy...

A federal appeals court judge has revived a $1-billion copyright infringement lawsuit by Viacom Inc.against Google Inc.'sYouTube, reopening a high-profile clash between old and new media. The dispute - which began when established media conglomerates were struggling to cope with the disruption of online video - reflected a frantic effort by Viacom to halt unauthorized snippets of its TV shows from showing up online. Ironically, the ruling, which revives the 2007 legal conflict, comes in the same week that YouTube announced an online movie distribution agreement with Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures.

The Pittsburgh MC Mac Miller is one of the most polarizing figures in rap music, selling reams of records to his college-age peers but loathed by many serious genre fans . Now he can add a new name to his enemies' list -- the Bronx MC Lord Finesse, who Miller sampled on a 2010 mixtape track, "Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza. " Miller has openly cited Finesse as a major influence, and he heavily sampled the MC-producer's 1995 track "Hip 2 Da Game" for a track off Miller's free 2010 mixtape "K.I.D.S.

EBay Inc. has begun monitoring items for sale on its site for possible copyright infringement in response to pressure from software makers and intellectual property interests. The new program has removed about 12 listings per day for software, movies, music and other copyrighted content since it began in December. The software industry's anti-piracy trade group and manufacturers of copyright products, such as Microsoft Corp., pushed for the change.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Boston last year against Management Information Source Inc., alleging that MIS' manuals on Lotus' 1-2-3 and Symphony software programs infringed upon the copyright of and plagiarized extensively Lotus' user manuals for those packages. MIS agreed in the settlement to stop distributing its first edition of "The Manual:1-2-3" and to cease further production or sale of its first edition of "The Manual: Symphony."

Question: I am writing a reference guide for the Internet. I will have to mention company names but do not want to infringe on copyrights or have my guide interpreted as an endorsement. How can I find out about disclaimers? Should I hire an attorney to review the guide? --Jane Puglisi, Palmdale * Answer: Merely mentioning the name of a company and factually stating its Internet address, for example, should not constitute trademark or copyright infringement.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether a performer can record a parody of a popular tune without paying copyright fees. The justices said they would review a ruling that requires the rap group 2 Live Crew to pay damages for what was deemed a "blatantly commercial" mockery of Roy Orbison's hit, "Oh, Pretty Woman." In their 1989 album "As Clean As They Wanna Be," 2 Live Crew sang about a "big hairy woman."

Supap Kirtsaeng was a Thai student in the United States who helped finance his education (and then some) by reselling textbooks that family members bought for a low price in Thailand. Textbook publisher John Wiley & Sons sued Kirtsaeng for copyright infringement in 2008, citing a federal ban on importing copyrighted goods without the copyright holder's permission. Lower courts agreed with Wiley, opining that the "first sale" doctrine - a buyer's right to sell, lend, rent or give away a lawfully purchased copy of a copyrighted work - did not apply to foreign-made products even if they'd been manufactured under contract with the copyright holder.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court gave foreign buyers of books, video discs and other copyrighted works a right to resell them in the U.S. without permission of the copyright owner, giving discount retailers a victory and the entertainment industry a setback. The 6-3 decision Tuesday came in the case of Supap Kirtsaeng, a USC graduate student from Thailand who figured he could earn money for his education by buying low-cost textbooks in his native country and reselling them in the United States.

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.

Aaron Swartz may be a galvanizing figure for Internet activists, but his exploits didn't exactly make him popular among copyright holders. In fact, the tributes to Swartz, who committed suicide last week while awaiting trial on computer fraud charges, have started drawing blowback from the defenders of strong copyrights, who argue that Swartz's efforts to "liberate" documents locked behind paywalls was nothing more than theft. A good example is an editorial in Friday's Wall Street Journal -- I'd link to it, but it's behind a paywall (insert your own snappy one-liner about irony or having the courage of one's convictions here)

Hollywood's chief lobbying group is taking issue with some academic research suggesting that the shutdown of popular file-hosting website Megaupload has hurt some movies' box-office revenues. Researchers at the Munich School of Management and the Copenhagen Business School recently posted a two-page summary concluding that the closing of Megaupload in January had a negative effect on box-office revenues of some movies, particular independent films that may benefit from the exposure to file-sharing sites.

If you're a Black Keys fan and you've ever been enticed to order a Meat Lovers' Supreme at Pizza Hut or invest in a storage shed from Home Depot, there might have been a subliminal reason. Each company used songs in commercials that sounded an awful lot like tracks from the Black Keys' smash album "El Camino," namely "Lonely Boy" and "Gold on the Ceiling. " The Black Keys noticed this too, and have reportedly settled the resulting lawsuits around copyright infringement of the band's music.

It's hard to know whom to sympathize with in this fight. On one side: the paparazzi who stalk celebrities in their moments of greatest vulnerability — at doctors' offices, with their newborns, when they are falling-down drunk. On the other: a blogger who helps himself to those photos, scrawls puerile comments on them, and posts them on his immensely popular and profitable website. The owners of one L.A. photo agency are so frustrated with what they consider to be blatant theft by self-styled "gossip gangsta" Perez Hilton that they've decided to make a federal case of it. On Nov. 30, X17 Inc., known for the aggressive pursuit of celebrity prey, filed a $7.6-million federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Hilton, alleging that he has used 51 photos without permission, payment or credit.

Imagine that a biographer is rummaging through an old trunk. He discovers a previously unseen letter from George Washington to Martha. He unfolds the brittle pages. "Martha, I must tell you, I was fibbing when I said, 'I cannot tell a lie.' " When that hypothetical biography is published, will you, the book buyer, get to read the Founding Father's confession? Hard to say.

the founder of Crystal Cathedral and the face of the globally watched "Hour of Power" television program --and his family will be paid just a fraction of the millions they sought from the preacher's bankrupt ministry. Schuller's daughter, Carol Milner, described Monday's ruling on intellectual property, copyright infringement and contract violations as a "travesty" that leaves the family no choice but to "start liquidating everything. " "It's an avoidance of responsibility for an organization to not take care of those who have gone before them.

A Los Angeles federal judge has denied Fox's request for a preliminary injunction to stop satellite broadcaster Dish Network from offering its new commercial-skipping feature known as the AutoHop. “Dish is gratified that the Court has sided with consumer choice and control by rejecting Fox's efforts to deny our customers access to AutoHop," said R. Stanton Dodge, executive vice president and general counsel of Dish. While the injunction was not granted, Fox said it didn't come away empty-handed.