Naruto is not monkeying around folks! The saga of the monkey Naruto’s copyright battle continues. This blog is about more than animal copyrights, however. Regardless of the outcome, there is an obvious lesson for all publishers in Naruto’s case and its appeal regarding the copyrights to the photos taken by the monkey. This case, (discussed below) […]
We often help Baby Boomers with copyright clearance issues as they come close to realizing a long-held goal of getting their memoirs written and published. Avoiding accidental copyright infringement is a frequent discussion topic. Baby Boomers want to write their memoirs for various reasons. They may suddenly be compelled to take that step of authorship because they have such […]
We creatives know there is nothing new under the sun. We know that art and literature thrive, in part, because creatives in these fields have so much wonderful work from which they may glean ideas for new works. And there is much public domain content that can be used to legally create derivatives. A derivative work is […]
So many of us learned early on in school that copying is OK as long as we give credit. I work with self-publishers often who have taken that lesson to heart in a big way and then hit a brick wall when trying to publish. Now, some copy with no thought of the right or […]
It is often said a picture is worth a thousands words. Sometimes we as self-publishers forget to consider the worth of a photograph or an image and what it contains. It is true that some photographs may not have sufficient value attached to them to qualify for copyright protection because they add nothing unique to […]
All the photos of Mike Tyson’s face in the Internet copyright news arena this past week carried me back to the not-too-distant past when another face was ubiquitous there—President Obama’s. Tyson’s facial tatoo had found its way to the face of an actor in the newly released movie “The Hangover Part II.” About two years […]