To be successful in the music industry, you need to surround yourself with good people. A good manager will always be a key member of your team. Having a manager allows you to focus on the creative side of your work, while ensuring that the more business-oriented aspects of your career are all being handled.…
DetailsTo be successful in the music industry, you need to surround yourself with good people. This doesn’t only include talented musicians and engineers – if you want to make a living from music, as soon as your career starts to pick up, you will need the support of professional advisers. These advisers are there to…
DetailsMuch has been made of the new EU Copyright Directive, with commentator’s opinions being polarised. Some say the Directive will offer greater protection for those operating in the creative industries but, in some cases, also has the potential to be “catastrophic” for online service providers. By way of background, the EU Copyright Directive essentially seeks…
DetailsWhen a district judge says to the parties something along the lines of ‘This is a modest claim. It has tears all over it. We cannot make people mediate but I repeat the encouragement and request’, the parties should take note. This was the message delivered by District Judge Hodge. The case in question is…
DetailsJames Rhodes is a classical pianist. He recorded himself playing Bach in his living room and posted the recording on YouTube as he has done on countless other occasions. YouTube immediately removed the video claiming infringement in 47 seconds of the video. Almost immediately stories were circulating on the internet headed ‘Sony Owns Bach’. As…
DetailsAs a law student in the mid 1980’s I well remember my pen hovering over the list of module choices and selecting EEC law and competition. It promised a taste of things continental and potentially two topics for one choice. This is a case where a closer inspection of the tin would have been a…
DetailsOver the last few decades the double-glazing salesman have been the target for jokes and have had to put up with a good deal of criticism and negative stereotyping. Despite all this the industry is growing and there is clearly appetite for companies to get in on a slice of the action. No better is…
DetailsWhat’s Amazon’ liability for trade mark infringement if they fulfil a product order that happens to be of a product that infringes a brand owner’s rights? This was the question considered in an action brought by Coty over their Davidoff Hot Water perfume. The products in this case were put on sale by a seller…
DetailsMonster Energy is a company you can expect to do battle with if you file for a trade mark containing the word Monster or anything that sounds like Monster. Monsta Pizza found this out when they applied to register their fun Pizza concept which employs a great green monster who bakes the pizza in its…
DetailsPrince’s estate had promised us lot of posthumous music going forward and we wait in eager anticipation of that. Meanwhile to preserve the value and integrity of his legacy the estate is suing a ‘bootleg label’ known as Eye Records. Describing itself as a “bootleg label dedicated” to the Purple One, the label is accused…
DetailsMarvel (Marvel Comics and Marvel Entertainment, LLC) has been around in some form for almost 80 years (Marvel began life as Timely Publications in 1939, by the 1950s it was known as Atlas Comics and by the 1960s the Marvel branding had begun). In that time the intellectual property rights in the Marvel brand and…
DetailsPicture the scene, you have spent days, weeks or even months choosing the perfect brand name and after a few clearance searches you discover, to your horror, that someone else has already registered a similar mark… is all lost? Must you go back to the drawing board? Or is there a way in which you…
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