Public Domain

Event: San Diego Press Club Meeting

Executive Director Art Neill will be speaking at the San Diego Press Club meeting on September 12th at 6pm. The panel is called "Nuts and Bolts: Intellectual Property – Protecting Yours and Using Others," and will include a discussion of using third party content online, protecting your own intellectual property, freelancers’ rights related to unauthorized republishing of their work, and journalists’ and media outlets’ responsibilities regarding work sourced from third parties.

The meeting is being held at the Procopio building in downtown San Diego, and the panel begins at 6pm.

NMR client brings the story of the first all-women crew to row across the Pacific Ocean to Netflix in Losing Sight of Shore

Congratulations to our client Sarah Moshman whose documentary Losing Sight of Shore recently made it to Netflix.  The documentary tells the story of the first all women team to row across the Pacific from the United States to Australia.

Thank you to recent graduates Maresa Martin and Nathalie Garcia who provided legal services along with New Media Rights Executive Director Art Neill.

Click through to read more about our work with this client.

Our new book: Don't Panic :) A Legal Guide (in plain english) for Small Businesses and Creative Professionals

Ever wonder what sorts of issues you may encounter as a creator or entrepreneur, and when you might want to reach out to a real life lawyer? That’s what our book "Don't Panic: A Legal Guide (in plain english) for Small Businesses and Creative Professionals" is all about. This book is designed to help you through the legal issues you may run into as a creator, entrepreneur, or innovator. We focus on issues you may encounter from the inception of your business to the moment (that hopefully doesn’t happen) you get a nasty lawyer letter for the first time. While this book is not a substitute for legal advice, it can serve as a helpful guide to preventing and resolving legal issues.

Event: Law 101 - The basics of Intellectual Property for Makers @ Fablab San Diego

Executive Director Art Neill & Advisory Board Member Kyle Welch,  a technology transfer attorney for San Diego State University (and a former NMR legal intern!) will discuss the basics of Intellectual Property at Fablab Wednesday June 29 at FabLab San Diego.  Come join us!

 

USPTO/NTIA offer up practical steps to sow the seeds of copyright reform

Over two years ago when we submitted comments in the United States Department of Commerce, United States Patent and Trademark Office and National Telecommunications and Information Administration copyright reform proceedings and again in our roundtable testimony, we advised a cautious approach that avoided the collateral damage that can come with hasty reforms. The final report takes a cautious balanced approach and shows support for many of the points we emphasized including:

  • The importance of developing a flexible criterion to help judges and juries determine the amount of statutory damages awarded. Particularly criteria that: consider whether the defendant use was non-commercial, had reasonable fair use argument and the financial means of the infringer. With flexible standards Copyright Trolls are much less likely to be able to exploit small-scale defendants’ lack of sophistication and resources to extract inappropriate settlements from them. (see pg 75 of the report for some of our thoughts)
  • The need for more public education on matters of copyright law, including fair use, to promote creativity.
  • The creation of easy to read fair use best practices developed within specific creative communities by creators, lawyers and other practitioners working in that specific area to help creators make informed decisions about fair use.
  • Recognizing the importance of having a small claims copyright court to help independent creators resolve disputes that doesn’t sacrifice important copyright safeguards, like fair use, in the process.(see pg 78 of the report for some of our thoughts)

How do I find the copyright holder?

CC0- Unsplash

At New Media Rights we get quite a few questions about how to find out who owns a copyrighted work. In this new guide we’ll talk about:

  • Whether or not you need to get permission to use the work.
  • How to get permission if the creator is still alive.
  • How to get permission of the author is dead.
  • Orphan works and what happens when you can’t find the author.

NMR launches law school IP and entrepreneurship clinics list!

As we've written about before there's a major justice gap when it comes to creators and entrepreneurs having access to critical legal services. While we do our best to provide free and low cost legal services, we’re only one organization. That's why we’ve created a national list of law school legal clinics as a resource to creators, entrepreneurs and even other lawyers to help find other legal clinics fighting to fill the justice gap. The clinics on the list typically provide completely free or low cost services depending on if you qualify and they have the capacity to take on new issues. Check out the complete list here.

 

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