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By Andrew MARSZAL LOS ANGELES, Dec 29, 2023 (AFP) – Almost a century after his big-screen debut, Mickey Mouse enters the public domain Monday, opening the floodgates to potential remakes, spin-offs, adaptations… and legal battles with Disney. The copyright on “Steamboat Willie” — a short, black-and-white 1928 animation that first introduced audiences to the mischievous rodent who would become emblematic of American pop culture — expires after 95 years, on January 1, under US law. […]
The heirs of an author whose article inspired the 1986 film “Top Gun” have sued Paramount Pictures for copyright infringement, according to court documents. Three decades after the blockbuster original, which was based on Ehud Yonay’s 1983 magazine article “Top Guns”, Paramount released a sequel last month that has topped North America’s box office. In their complaint filed Monday to a California court, Shosh Yonay and Yuval Yonay, the writer’s widow and son who live in […]
by Frédéric POUCHOT Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — French media firms said Thursday that they would drag Google before the country’s competition regulator over its refusal to compensate them for displaying their content in defiance of a strict new EU copyright law. The APIG press alliance, which groups dozens of national and regional newspapers, said it would also press the French government to take action against the US internet giant. “We are outraged,” […]
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AFP) — Internet giant Google on Monday urged the European Parliament to resist approving a planned overhaul of the bloc’s online copyright law that the company said would hurt Europe for “decades to come”. European lawmakers could vote as soon as next week on the landmark legislation that is intended to modernise copyright for the digital age but has set off a furious lobbying war in Brussels. Tech giants, artistic creators and […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Wikipedia went down in at least three countries Wednesday in a protest at an upcoming European Parliament vote on a highly disputed law that could make online platforms legally liable for copyrighted material put on the web by users. In Spain, Italy, and Poland, an explanatory protest statement about the upcoming vote came up when the online encyclopedia was consulted. “The directive would threaten online freedom and would impose new filters, […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — News agencies welcomed Monday what they called a “major step” by the EU parliament’s legal committee asking internet giants to pay for press articles. Officials are hammering out an overhaul of EU copyright rules against the backdrop of free online news that has decimated earnings for traditional media companies. “Very profitable companies, like Facebook and Google, offer users qualified news reporting from publishers including news agencies, but they do not offer […]
by Glenn Chapman Agence France Presse SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) — An appeals court on Tuesday gave Oracle another shot at wringing billions of dollars from Google in a keenly watched legal battle over the use of freely available Java software code. A federal appellate court revived Oracle’s case, ruling that the application programming interface (API) code at issue is protected by copyright law and sending the case back to the original judge to […]
OTTAWA, Canada (AFP) – Canadian telecommunications firm BlackBerry sued Facebook on Tuesday, accusing the American social media company of infringing on its patents for messaging apps. BlackBerry is claiming infringement on patents it holds for message encryption and notifications, and is seeking an injunction as well as damages for lost profits, although no figure was given. Facebook and its wholly-owned services Instagram and WhatsApp are named as defendants in the lawsuit. The company said it intends to fight the […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — The most popular “streamripping” site, in which millions of users have converted YouTube videos into audio files, shut down Thursday faced with a legal campaign by the music industry. YouTube-mp3.org, a site in Germany started in the bedroom of computer science student Philip Matesanz, was inaccessible on Thursday with no further message. The global recorded music industry group IFPI, along with its US and British affiliates, announced that the […]
LOS ANGELES, United States (Reuters) — Walt Disney Co was sued on Tuesday (March 21) by a longtime Hollywood screenwriter and producer who accused the studio of copying its blockbuster, Oscar-winning animated film “Zootopia” from his work without permission. Gary Goldman, whose credits include the Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Total Recall” and Tom Cruise film “Minority Report,” filed his copyright infringement lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. He said Disney replicated, sometimes “virtually […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Paul McCartney on Wednesday filed a lawsuit to secure the copyright to the Beatles back catalog in a case that could have wide ramifications for the music industry. The complicated dispute centers around the US Copyright Act of 1976 which aimed to address pop music’s checkered history with artists by ensuring long-term rights for songwriters and their heirs. Under the law, artists could reclaim copyright for songs 35 years […]
LONDON,United Kingdom (Reuters) — Two California-based musicians are suing British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran for $20 million over his hit song “Photograph,” which they claim bears a similar structure to one of their songs, according to court documents filed on Wednesday (June 8). The copyright infringement lawsuit was filed by Martin Harrington, a songwriter and producer, and Thomas Leonard, a songwriter signed to Harrington’s company HaloSongs, in federal court in the Central District of California. The […]
