The culinary world presents unique challenges when it comes to intellectual property protection. While chefs, food bloggers, and recipe developers invest considerable creativity and effort into their recipes, the legal landscape surrounding recipe protection is surprisingly complex and often counterintuitive. Understanding how copyright, trademark, and patent law apply to recipes is crucial for anyone in …
Category: copyright
I.P. Issues in Gaming
The gaming industry sits at a fascinating intersection of creativity and intellectual property law, where developers, content creators, and players constantly navigate complex copyright and trademark landscapes. Understanding these legal frameworks is crucial for anyone involved in game development, streaming, or content creation. Copyright Fundamentals in Gaming Copyright protection extends to numerous elements within video …
Metadata and Web Scraping: I.P. Issues
In our increasingly digital world, data extraction and analysis have become fundamental to how businesses operate, researchers conduct studies, and AI systems learn. Two key concepts at the heart of this data revolution are metadata and web scraping technologies. While these tools offer tremendous value, they also raise significant questions about privacy and intellectual property …
Understanding the Elements of a Copyright Infringement Claim
Copyright cases require plaintiffs to prove specific elements to establish a valid claim. Understanding these requirements is necessary for both copyright holders seeking to protect their work and defendants facing allegedly infringing allegations. This post examines the fundamental elements of copyright infringement, focusing on the analysis of the copying requirement. Because the Court of Appeals …
Understanding the Originality Requirement in Copyright Law
Copyright law protects original works of authorship, but the definition of “originality” often creates layers of confusion among creators and authors (referred to as “authors”). At its core, the originality requirement establishes a threshold of creativity that must be met before a work qualifies for copyright protection. The Baseline for Originality Originality is the “bedrock …
Why Did Trump Fire the Register of Copyrights?
The Controversy In late May 2025, President Trump fired Shira Perlmutter, who led the U.S. Copyright Office. This was just days after he also dismissing the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden. The timing of Perlmutter’s termination sparked significant controversy due to her firing in proximity to the Copyright Office’s release of a major report on …
IP for Content Creators
In today’s digital economy, subscription-based content platforms like OnlyFans, JustforFans, Vimeo, Patreon, and YouTube have created unprecedented opportunities for creators to monetize their work directly to the consuming public. However, these opportunities come with complex intellectual property (IP) considerations that content creators must understand to protect their rights and avoid potential legal issues. Copyright Fundamentals …
Understanding the Selection-and-Arrangement Theory in Copyright Law
Introduction In copyright infringement cases, courts must determine whether one work impermissibly copies another’s protected expression. While the widely used “extrinsic test” focuses on comparing specific elements between works, the selection-and-arrangement theory offers a different analytical framework that recognizes that creativity often lies in how creators select, coordinate, and arrange elements—even when the individual components …
Note on the Useful Articles Doctrine in Copyright
Copyright law broadly protects creative works and the human endeavors required to create an original work of authorship. However, creativity should not be confused with utility. A dictionary definition for “creativity” is “ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new.” A definition for “utility” is “the quality or state of being useful.” A …
AI Works Not Eligible for Copyright Registration
Consistency in intellectual property regimes is essential for a uniform practice of those intellectual property laws. Case in point is Thaler v. Perlmutter, a copyright case holding that works created by artificial intelligence software is not a human author for purposes of the Copyright Act of 1976 (See 17 U.S.C. §102(a) (“Copyright protection subsists . …