The following is a guest post by Regan A. Smith, General Counsel and Associate Register of Copyrights. “When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state always change with them.” Plato, the Republic Book IV (Jowett tr.) Following unanimous votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate, today the President signed the …
The following is a guest post by Ryan Kwock, summer law clerk in the Office of Policy and International Affairs This summer, I had the pleasure of serving as a law clerk in the Office of Policy and International Affairs at the U.S. Copyright Office. In addition to working on challenging domestic and international copyright …
The following is a guest post by Tracie Coleman, Information Section head of the Licensing Division. I began my career in the U.S. Copyright Office in 1991. For ten years, I worked as a bibliographer in the Copyright Public Records Reading Room (CPRRR). When responding to public requests for copyright information, I was responsible for …
The following is a guest post by Zhao Zhao, summer law clerk in the Office of Policy and International Affairs The U.S. Copyright Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) successfully hosted the 2018 International Copyright Institute (ICI) from June 4–8, 2018, in Washington, D.C. The Copyright Office’s Office of Policy & International Affairs …
The following is a guest post by Brad Greenberg, counsel for policy and international affairs. This month marks the hundredth anniversary of oral arguments in the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case of International News Service v. Associated Press (1918), which established the federal common law doctrine of “hot news” misappropriation. This anniversary comes at a …
The following is a guest post by Frances Carden, technical writer in the Copyright Modernization Office. The buzz around here has been big–you may remember my April post about the establishment of the Copyright Modernization Office (CMO) that directs all modernization initiatives across the U.S. Copyright Office–and it’s getting bigger and bolder. On May 7, …
The following is a guest post by Jason E. Sloan, attorney advisor, Office of General Counsel. Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives unanimously passed the Music Modernization Act (H.R. 5447) by an impressive vote of 415 to 0. Why is this important? Because if the bill is passed by the Senate and enacted into law, …
The following is a guest post by Frances Carden, technical writer in the Copyright Modernization Office. I joined the Copyright Modernization Office (CMO) straight from a background in federal consulting. I honestly hadn’t planned to change jobs, but was drawn in by CMO’s posted job description requesting a technical writer namely because a) I’m a …
The following is a guest post by Emma Kleiner, Barbara A. Ringer Program fellow. Can a gossip website use copyrighted images of celebrities without first obtaining a license? Is an author allowed to incorporate elements from a Dr. Seuss book into his own manuscript? You can find clues to answer these questions–and many others–in the …