Copyright Act 1987 (Media Law)

10.  Upin & Ipin Tee Printing Cases A garment wholesaler has been fined RM300,000 for having 150 T-shirts with the cartoon characters “Upin & Ipin” without permission from its copyright owner. Wholesaler Fook Tai Sdn Bhd, who was represented by its director Yap Kien Sing, 49, was slapped with the summons case in a Sessions Court (Intellectual Property) yesterday. The wholesaler pleaded guilty to owning the round neck T-shirts when its copyright belonged to Les’ Copaque Production Sdn Bhd at its premise in Lorong Haji Taib 4, Jalan Raja Laut, at about 5.30pm on May 22, 2009. According to the facts of the case, an enforcement team from the Domestic Trade, Co-operatives and Consumerism Ministry had raided the premises on that day with a search warrant. However, Yap failed to open the grille and left the place. It was only when the team sought help from the police that Yap unlocked the grille and allowed them to enter the premises....

9.  Modern Dog Design vs. Target Corporation Seattle design firm Modern Dog utilized a series of sketches of dogs in their compendium put out by Chronicle Books in 2008. The firm alleges that illustrations from that design have been used in a T-shirt produced by Disney/Target for sale, and filed a lawsuit in 2011. TBD. There hasn’t been a decision yet in this case but Modern Dog has been campaigning online pretty heavily for publicity and funds to help with its legal fees over the issue. The Modern Dog case has brought to light a question burning in the mind of many designers and artists — what happens if a major corporation with many more resources than me, utilizes my artwork for profit? Modern Dog was recently forced to sell their studio to cover the legal costs associated with this battle, so it’s turning into a very extreme situation for them. We’ll have to keep an eye out for how this progressed and continues to change the conversation around this iss...

8. The Associated Press vs. Fairey Famous street artist Shephard Fairey created the Hope poster during President Obama’s first run for presidential election in 2008. The design rapidly became a symbol for Obama’s campaign, technically independent of the campaign but with its approval. In January 2009, the photograph on which Fairey allegedly based the design was revealed by the Associated Press as one shot by AP freelancer Mannie Garcia with the AP demanding compensation for its use in Fairey’s work. Fairey responded with the defense of fair use, claiming his work didn’t reduce the value of the original photograph. The artist and the AP press came to a private settlement in January 2011, part of which included a split in the profits for the work. Though there wasn’t a court case and an actual verdict, this case created a lot of discourse around the value of work in these copyright battles. It’s unlikely that Garcia’s work could have ever reached the level of fame ...

7. Rogers vs. Koons Photographer Art Rogers shot a photograph of a couple holding a line of puppies in a row and sold it for use in greeting cards and similar products. Internationally, renowned artist Jeff Koons in the process of creating an exhibit on the banality of everyday items, ran across Rodgers’ photograph and used it to create a set of statues based on the image. Koons sold several of these structures, making a significant profit. Upon discovering the copy, Rodgers sued Koons for copyright. Koons responded by claiming fair use by parody. The court found the similarities between the 2 images too close, and that a “typical person” would be able to recognize the copy. Koon’s defense was rejected under the argument that he could have used a more generic source to make the same statement without copying Rogers’ work. Koons was forced to pay a monetary settlement to Rodgers. This is one of those famous cases that encompassed a larger issue in the art world, th...

6. Gucci vs Guess In 2009 Gucci sued Guess for infringing on five Gucci trademarks, including the use of similar logos. This is perhaps unsurprising given that Guess has been subject to 12 copyright complaints over the last ten years. But they have successfully managed to resolve all previous situations almost immediately… until they messed with Gucci. Guess used many of Gucci’s distinctive marks, including a green and red stripe used on handbags, the repeating, inverted GG pattern, and the company’s use of brown and beige colours, mostly used in conjunction with diamond shape patterns. Of course, Gucci came out on top, but not in the way they had hoped for. Initially asking for $221m in damages, the judge told Gucci they were only entitled to an accounting of profits and limited the damages. In the end, Gucci only received $4.7m. Guess was also barred from using most of their designs ever again, primarily the Quattro G patterns in brown and beige colours and the CR...

5. Apple vs Google Apple is no stranger to court, especially when it comes to Google. After all, there are several companies that are making phones using Google’s Android software. Steve Jobs repeatedly called the Android a “stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” Apparently things got so heated between Apple and Google that former Google CEO (and current chairman) Eric Schmidt stepped down from his position on Apple’s Board of Directors. In 2010, Apple sued Samsung. Google had to step in and help Samsung patly due to a ‘Mobile Application Distribution Agreement’. A Google lawyer revealed that the company agreed to “provide partial or full indemnity with regard to four patents.” And in one of the highest-profile lawsuits in technology, Motorola sued Apple at the same time Samsung was taken to court. Motorola accused Apple of infringing several patents, which included how cellphones operated on a 3G network. On the other hand, Apple claimed th...

4. James Dyson vs Hoover What has made Dyson so successful is the use of a bagless vacuum cleaner which uses two cyclones. One removes small particles while the other collects larger items. This is the patented technology that bitter rival Hoover infringed. According to Dyson, before him, nobody in the field had thought to sell a bagless vacuum cleaner. However, Alberto Bertali, managing director of Hoover European Appliances Group, claimed that the Tripple Vortex “ recirculated dusty air between three cyclones and did not filter it.” A counterclaim that the Dual Cyclone’s technology was “nothing that was not generally known within the industry,” was dismissed by the High Court. Unfortunately for them the High Court ruled that Hoover had intentionally copied the technology at the heart of Dyson’s Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner. Dyson said: “Their claims that the Triple Vortex is different were shown to be completely false. Hoover showed no interest in the technology wh...

3.  Apple vs Microsoft The battle between these tech giants started with a simple question: who invented the graphical user interface (GUI)? The company that controls the interface of the next major operating system will have the ability to set the standards for application software, so it’s unsurprising that Apple tried to stop Windows from becoming a major operating system. It seemed that although Microsoft helped develop Macintosh, Jean-Louis Gassée, who had taken over from Steve Jobs at the time, refused to allow Microsoft to use their software. Bill Gates pressed on nonetheless, deciding to add in features of its own to early prototypes of the Macintosh.  When Gassée noted the software, he was enraged. However, he didn’t want a lawsuit, and ended up agreeing to license the Mac’s visual displays. But Windows 2.0 turned out to be almost identical, and Gassée believed it to be a breach of contract, only having allowed their software to be used for 1.0...

2.  Star Wars Vs Battlestar Galactica The success of the first Star Wars film convinced Universal to quickly greenlight its own sci-fi property, Battlestar Galactica . Twentieth Century Fox felt that the new show was veering too closely to the Star Wars universe, and filed suit for copyright infringement. Universal moved for summary judgment on the ground that works were simply so dissimilar that no reasonable jury could find infringement. The Central District of California agreed and granted summary judgment, reasoning that the works were only similar on the most general level of intellectual abstraction, i.e., both were “a struggle between good and evil in space.” But the Ninth Circuit did not agree and held that there were many similarities between the works that “do in fact raise genuine issues of material fact as to whether only the Star Wars idea or the expression of that idea was copied.” Among the similarities cited by the Ninth Circuit were: A war between...

1. A&M Record Inc v Napster Inc In 2000, one of the most famous cases in intellectual property law was taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals, 9 th Circuit, when a group of major record labels took on Napster, Inc. The music file-sharing company, set up by then 18-year old Northeastern University student Shawn Fanning and his partner Sean Parker, was a revolutionary piece of sharing software, which allowed users to share any number of music files online. At its peak the software had around 20 million users sharing files peer-to-peer. A&M Records, along with a list of 17 other companies and subsidiaries accused Napster of copyright infringement, for allowing users to search and download MP3 files from other users’ computers. Rock band, Metallica and hip hop star Dr Dre also filed separate cases against the sharing software company. These cases led to a federal judge in San Fransisco ordering Napster to close its free file-sharing capacities. After the judge’s decision, the c...

ASSIGNMENT FOR MLL 2013 MOHAMAD ABU HUZAIFAH BIN MOHD SALLEH 1121118373 TRIMESTER 1730 2017/2018 Copyright Act 1987 Lecture on Infringement of Copyright This blog entry is intended for study or research purposes only on topics related to copyright issue.  I chose to discuss a topic about copyright issue arising in creative multimedia. First of all, before i go more deep about copyright, I want to discuss and explain about the meaning of copyright. Copyright is a legal right that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution. This is usually only for a limited time. The exclusive rights are not absolute but limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law, including fair use. A major limitation on copyright is that copyright protects only the original expression of ideas, and not the underlying ideas themselves. Copyright is a form of intellectual property, applicable to certain forms of creative work. ...