For well over a century, legislators, courts, lawyers, and scholars have spent significant time and energy debating the optimal duration of copyright protection. While there is general consensus that copyright's term is of legal and economic significance, arguments both for and against a lengthy...

This chapter explores IP protectability of what may be broadly termed “folk music,” though, that is a term fraught with ambiguity, from an intellectual property social justice (IP-SJ) framework. Our IP-SJ approach helps illuminate how IP law and administration affect opportunities for...

Starting in 2013, authors of copyrighted work and their successors will be able to terminate every assignment and license 35 years after execution. These termination rights are inalienable and are expected to have a substantial impact on some industries, and in particular, the music...

Back in 2012, I was talking with an acquaintance, who happens to be a copyright scholar, about a cease and desist letter that an artist had received from a publisher. The publisher objected to the artist’s display and sale of works that collaged cutouts from a comic book with new material...

This paper consists in the “Lens of London” documentary which is created by Queen Mary students of Intellectual Property Law under the US jurisdiction. The focus of this paper are the issues such as: what is a performer, who owns the copyright of the work, credit and pre-existing work...

Illegal downloading of copyright materials by end-users had its heyday in the early 2000s, with music, television, and film studios desperately searching for a way to curb the tide of sharing. This chapter uses the example of Capitol Records v Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the first file-sharing case to...

The role of copyright law in furthering social justice is blurred. On the one hand, copyright law aims to guarantee a more or less exclusive protection. On the other hand, copyright law also intends to strike a fair balance between the interests of rightholders and the society. Such balancing...

Profile picture projects ("PFPs") are the reigning format for NFTs, both aesthetically and economically. Aesthetically, the format allows for experiments in variation within a standard template on a high-volume scale that Andy Warhol would have envied. Economically, it allows creators to supply...