The PA Bar Exam is Doomed to Failure and the PABOLE is Fine with That
Another day, another mass primal scream of “Oh, what fresh hell is this?” as PA Bar examinees are faced with more callousness, indifference, and willful ignorance on the part of the PA Board of Law Examiners (PABOLE). PA bar applicants are in the middle of month 6 of studying for an exam that was supposed [...]
Regulatory Sandboxes: Initiatives for Innovation and Inclusion in the Philippines
The Philippines recognizes the need to calibrate its regulatory policies to encourage the entry of new and emerging technology and to foster an innovative mindset among key stakeholders in the technology sector. To incentivize innovation in the financial sphere, Philippine authorities have adopted regulatory sandboxes that aim to provide businesses in the financial sector with [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on Tuesday dismissed an appeal against Michaels Stores Inc. and Craft Smith that alleged the companies infringed on a designer’s copyrights and trade dress rights with a “knockoff” version of a personal planner. EC Design has sold its personal organizer, the LifePlanner, since 2007. In 2015, Craft [...]
Neil Young sues President Trump for using songs without permission at campaign rally
Canadian-American musician Neil Young sued President Donald Trump Tuesday for copyright infringement, saying that Trump used two of his songs, Rockin’ in the Free World and Devil’s Sidewalk, without permission during a campaign rally. The complaint alleges that President Trump’s re-election campaign “willfully ignored Plaintiff’s telling it not to play the Songs and willfully proceeded [...]
The coronavirus epidemic has upended every aspect of our lives. For weeks, people have been stuck at home, unable to go to their jobs, see their friends, run errands, or even go outside. Most businesses are closed or offer only very limited service. The same is true of public services, some of which are limited, [...]
Reforming Digital Lending Libraries and the End of the Internet Archive
Four US publishers, including three from the big five, have sued the Internet Archive (IA) for mass copyright infringement under its emergency library program (ELP). IA is known for championing Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) through its open library, wherein it lends out e-copies of books it holds physically, maintaining a loaned-to-owned ratio. In response to [...]
Obscuring the Lines of Truth: The Alarming Implications of Deepfakes
Technology has always been a necessary evil but the advent of Deepfake has tilted the balance more towards the evil side. Deepfakes are an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based technology used to morph a person’s face onto another and manipulate voice recordings. Deepfakes have been increasingly used to create doctored videos and sound recordings which on [...]
On May 29, 2020, the Ninth Circuit continued the trend of courts more closely scrutinizing the plaintiff’s compliance with registration formalities in copyright infringement lawsuits. Registration formalities have received more attention since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation v. Wall-Street.com, LLC. There, the Supreme Court resolved a split in the Circuit [...]
The dearth of clear judicial precedent on tattoo copyrights enforceability has left the legal profession and the entertainment industry searching for answers. The question arises: to whom does the copyright of a tattoo remain with; the tattoo artist or the individual who wears ink on their body? At this point, a perplexing dichotomy starts between [...]
US Copyright Office urges Congress to revise Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The US Copyright Office issued a report on Thursday claiming that the safe-harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) now favors tech companies over rights-holders. After studying the issue for years and taking into consideration more than 92,000 comments, the Copyright Office suggests that “Congress may wish to fine-tune” the statute. The report [...]
