Authors, beware! The next time you post your work on social media, you may lose significant ownership rights. A core principle of U.S. copyright law is that the author controls how their work is used, and can earn money from that use if they wish. But what happens when a photographer posts her work on […]
Licensing
‘Generalissimo Francisco Franco is Still Dead!’* At least insofar as patent licensing goes. On June 22 the Supreme Court decided yet another patent case – this one relating to patent royalties after the patent expires. In 1964, the Supreme Court in the Brulotte case determined that even with a contract, a patent owner cannot collect royalties for […]
There are many misconceptions about posting images on websites and social media. They range from believing everything online is free-for-the-taking to assuming that if you give attribution of ownership to an image, you’re not infringing someone’s copyright. These assumptions are just plain wrong. Just ask anybody who’s received a cease and desist letter and ended […]
Do your employees create new inventions, products or designs? Have all of your employees assigned all company inventions to the company? If not, then the company does not own the invention, even if the invention was created on company time and with company resources and in the course of the employee’s work for the company. […]
Every employer that engages in research and development work should obtain a present assignment of patent rights in future inventions from every employee. The U.S. Supreme Court underscored this fact in the recent case of Standford v Roche. Stanford University’s research employee worked on a project to detect HIV infection. In the employment agreement, the […]
Lessons Learned – Read Your Software Licenses Carefully!
November 26, 2009
Licensing
A recent case before the United States District Court of Appeals demonstrates how important it is for companies to understand their software licenses when planning mergers and reorganizations. Novelis Corporation learned the hard way when it completed an internal corporate restructuring. Here’s what happened in Cincom Systems, Inc. v. Novelis Corp., 581 F.3d 431 (6th […]