If you’re a music student at Middle Tennessee State University you are required to take – and pass – a course on your rights as an artist, namely Copyright Law. And Ramona DeSalvo, an IP attorney and assistant professor at MTSU, is going to make sure you “get” how important your rights are to you.
Ramona [...]

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama recently reiterated the critical role trade plays in the U.S. economy and job creation and growth by issuing a Presidential Proclamation declaring May 16-22nd, 2010, World Trade Week (see the proclamation on the White House web site). We’re honoring World Trade Week by being honored with an interview with Assistant [...]

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WASHINGTON — This morning the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus announced its “2010 International Anti-Piracy Watch List,” the nations that leading members of Congress will focus on in the coming year in terms of improving the protection of U.S. rights owners of intellectual property. As was the case last year, the five nations being watched are [...]

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It’s been nearly five years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Grokster and clearly established the illegality of a corporation facilitating massive copyright infringement via P2P software, but now the exclamation point has been placed on that decision by Judge Kimba Wood of the U.S. District Court. In a decision that is both obvious [...]

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SANTA MONICA — Anyone who has been in the copyright policy space awhile knows that the music industry is frequently described as the “canary in the coal mine.” The analogy comes from the tradition of miners bringing caged canaries into mines to gauge how toxic the air was. If the canary died, they should probably [...]

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Kudos to the White House for posting hundreds and hundreds of comments online in response to the call by Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, for guidance on how to improve enforcement of IP rights. You can see them here.
I’d direct your attention to our filing, because even though we already have our [...]

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The U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Friday announced this year’s “Special 301″ list of countries failing to adequately protect the rights of IP owners. Kudos to The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, for making it off the Watch List due to improvements in their borders. USTR noted these successes follow similar improvements in Israel [...]

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WASHINGTON — Join me in celebrating World IP Day, and yes, let’s emphasize the word “World.” Here at the Copyright Alliance we tend to focus on U.S. artists and creators, but creativity and cultural contributions are global. International treaties provide rights under law to artists around the world, but that doesn’t mean their own countries [...]

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WASHINGTON — It’s World IP Day again, did you get all of your celebratory cards in the mail? No harm if you didn’t, but the ten-year-old designation by the World Intellectual Property Organization has been celebrated the last five years by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) with an event on Capitol Hill, and today [...]

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WASHINGTON — Happy World IP Day! The ten-year old holiday, launched by the World Intellectual Property Organization, has been celebrated for the last five years by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) with a conference on Capitol Hill. Today’s was possibly the best yet, despite the fact that I moderated a panel there with a [...]

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