An appellate court recently has found that the creator of a TV show reasonably interpreted a producer’s informal statement “OK, OK, I get it,” as an acceptance of his offer and that an agreement the parties reached was not indefinite as to the categories included in determining net royalties. The case turned on comments made during negotiations by Richard C. Davis, founder of Trademark Properties Inc., a company specializing in buying, remodeling and selling houses for profit. He discussed whether his business could be the fodder for a reality television series with Charlie Nordlander, an A&E Executive.  Their negotiations led the parties to agree to jointly develop and produce the television series “Flip This House.”  The parties agree specifics of their agreement were never written down.  Still, the series pilot and thirteen episodes of Flip This House were filmed.  Then Davis and A&E disputed how to divide the show’s net revenues. And from there sprang a lawsuit. Read the rest of this entry »

The Federal Court of Australia, has ruled that TV Now,  a service allowing subscribers to download sports events on mobile phones and tablets and watch them within minutes of a live broadcast, does not fall under the “private and domestic use” exception of the Copyright Act. This decision resulted from a challenge of licensed recordings made available on equipment operated by and located with a commercial third party and the legality of recordings stored on a cloud service operated by a commercial third party. While it may be an Australian appellate ruling, it falls in line with other case decisions that have halted this type of technology, overseas and in the United States. Some analysts see this decision with further implications for cloud-based services. Ars Technica reports further on these implications here.

In ‘Oh, Really?’ the Biederman Blog’s editors — voracious consumers of all matters pop culture — cast a curious, skeptical, fun and smart end-of-the-week eye on popular productions, sharing their keen observations about legal matters these raise.

Due Date is a typical road-trip movie, in which Robert Downey Jr. plays a high-strung architect, Peter Highman, returning home to Los Angeles from Atlanta for the birth of his first child when he meets Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis), a fatherless, jobless and shiftless, aspiring actor. In the opening scene, this unlikely pair gets booted from a plane and must drive to LA, encountering many bumps in the road on their quest to get home — and encountering some legal issues worth consideration.

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While those of the internet era might think that Hollywood’s a johnny-come-lately to matters of intellectual property law, Peter Decherney, a University of Pennsylvania associate professor of cinema studies, English and communications, shows in his new book, Hollywood’s Copyright Wars:  From Edison to the Internet, that cinematic pioneers dealt with copyright concerns — and this area has been an important concern of the industry ever since. Still, as Decherney points out, the history of the movie business and copyright law has been unpredictable, at best — what could have been big legal matters weren’t, while some lesser issues turned out to be key. For entertainment law practitioners who want a readable work that provides a longer view and context to today’s trade pub headlines, this book might be a boon; it wins praise in a review from the 1709 blog and here’s more info on Decherney, his main book page and his YouTube discussion , “Can the Supreme Court save the Public Domain … and Hollywood?”

The appellate division of the Supreme Court of New York has determined that Paramount Pictures has distribution rights to 16 vintage movies, despite the claims by Richard Feiner & Co. Inc. that it owns the exclusive rights in certain markets. In 1986, the New York company Richard Feiner & Co. sold the rights to exploit 16 feature-length films produced in the 1940s and 1950s to Republic Pictures for almost $2.5 million.  In the contract, Feiner was to retain and the rights to show the movies markets where it currently had existing licenses, which included New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and 18 other others.  Feiner claimed that in 2007, Paramount–which took over Republic’s rights to the films — had violated the contract by showing the works on American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies TV in the plaintiff’s selected markets.  Paramount did not dispute the airings, but argued that it had not collected any royalties on the airing of the films from June, 2001, to May, 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

Tupac and Nate Dogg — rappers who have been deceased since 1996 and 2011, respectively — appeared last week on stage, albeit as holograms that allowed Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg to perform their noteworthy songs “California Love” and “The Next Episode” without missing a beat. The West Coast performance demonstrated the identical hologram technology that allowed Mariah Carey to perform a Christmas concert in five European cities simultaneously. This new technology raises interesting legal issues about use of the likeness of a dead celebrity. Read the rest of this entry »

Image www.kmtp.tv

A longstanding law barring public broadcast television stations from airing paid political or public-issue ads has been deemed unconstitutional by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which, in a 2-1 vote, ruled that prohibition violated the free speech clause of the First Amendment.  The court stated: ”Public issue and political speech in particular is at the very core of the First Amendment’s protection … Public issue and political advertisements pose no threat of ‘commercialization.’” Read the rest of this entry »

A New York judge has sent a strong message, ordering entertainer Prince to pay $3.95 million for failing to honor a licensing agreement that he signed in 2006. That agreement contained provisions for the pop star to promote an eponymous fragrance through media and in-store appearances, distributing samples at concerts, and then receiving 50 percent of any profits made from the product. But two years later, Revelation, the fragrance company that entered the deal, sued Prince, asserting breach and seeking damages. Read the rest of this entry »