Get familiar with your Intellectual Properties

This month we have touched on a few topics in Intellectual Property such as trademarks, copyrights, fair uses, etc., I have picked three podcast to share, that will talk about cases in Intellectual Property. The podcast are from entertainment lawyer Gordon Firemark. The first podcast touches on a few topics such as, sound recording royalties, a copyright case dealing with rapper Jay-Z, and a local Houston’s producer on being sued for copyright infringement. As of now artist are only being paid for record sales and/or satellite radio. They have never received royalties for radio clear channel broadcast. The legislatives are trying to pass a bill in favor of the musical artist to begin receiving royalties for songs played on the radio. Well in order for this to happen radio stations will have to pay fee to RIAA to play your favorite song on the radio. But as of now no ruling has been made.

 Jay-Z had a case of copyright infringement for the song “Big Pimpin”. The plaintiff Nafal claimed that the Egyptian tune in the song belongs to writer Baligh Hamdi. Nafal claimed the rights to the Egyptian song through an assignment agreement with a third party who allegedly acquired the rights through Hamdi’ heirs. The federal court came back and granted summary judgment to the “Big Pimpin” and stated that Nafal’s agreement did not give him the exclusive rights necessary to bring on the copyright suit.

And producer Jim Jonsin sued over copyright infringement for Houston rapper Slim Thug song “I Run”. The original creator for the track Jason Jaggon was never notified that Jonsin had interest in the track for use, this giving Jaggon the right to sue him for compensation and copyright infringement. The case is still in court and has not been a ruling for this case.

The second podcast address the issues of the Minnesota woman who download 24 songs from a file sharing application. Six Major Record labels brought a suit against her, for statutory damages for illegally distributing songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music. The damages equal out to $1.92 million, the court reduced the award to $54,000 ($2,250 per song), three times the minimum statutory amount. Least to say I don’t think she will be downloading any more songs illegally from the Internet every again. Another topic was Pink Floyd v EMI, the group has in a expressed in a contract to prohibit selling tracks as a single song sale. The court holds that Record labels cannot sell the band track individually without permission. Pink Floyd stated it was a moral rights issue to keep the albums “whole”, which was included in the contracts. The band’s music was placed on iTunes for album purchase and single song purchases. The contracted was applied before iTunes or any other MP3 websites came a long.

On the final podcast discusses the court case with Eminem on whether digital distribution of a third party should obtain a license and that the copyright owner should receive a percentage of the income made from the song under contract.  A contract was made between UMG and Apple to digitally distributed Eminem’s master recordings through iTunes for permanent downloads. Artist and labels are entitled to receive payment of royalties from record sales or license where a duplication of the song is use to make another record. In the same case a former label Eminem was signed to F.B.T. Productions are suing for royalties due over older songs. In 1995, F.B.T gained exclusive rights to Eminem’s recordings. In 1998 F.B.T. signed an agreement to transfer the rights to Aftermath Eminem’s label as “Records Sold” and would receive 12 to 20% of retail price. In 2003, F.B.T. and Aftermath created a new agreement that terminated the 1998 agreement. The agreement increase royalty rates and changed the wording of Record Sold to Masters Licensed. F.B.T. brought the suit after an audit showed that Aftermath had been applying the Records Sold to calculate royalties due to F.B.T. and not Masters Licensed. Aftermath stated that it did include the royalties from permanent downloads. So the court ruled that F.B.T. would not receive additional royalty payment and Eminem would get royalties from the iTunes downloads.

Podcast 1:http://firemark.com/2010/08/25/entertainment-law-update-podcast-episode/
Podcast 2. http://firemark.com/2010/03/25/entertainment-law-update-podcast-episode-olympic-trademarks-  album-integrity-more/
Podcast 3. http://firemark.com/2010/09/29/entertainment-law-update-podcast-episode/