January 1 is not only New Year’s Day, but also Public Domain Day, the day each year on which works with expiring copyrights enter the public domain for all to use and replicate. Copyright protection exists for a limited time to balance the goals of protecting the artist’s hard work on the one hand and, on the other, ensuring that the public can benefit from and build on that work [ ... ]
When a trademark is assigned from one owner to another, it must be transferred together with the goodwill associated with the business. Goodwill refers to the value a mark has to consumers. For instance, the goodwill of the Coca-Cola trademark is the consumer recognition and loyalty that the brand has garnered over time due to the products it sells.
An assignment in gro [ ... ]
Artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses various technological systems with differing levels of complexity. On a basic level, we understand what the algorithm is doing. For instance, some AI uses unsupervised learning, where the AI learns by encountering large quantities of data and identifies patterns. After analyzing many images of a camera, the system can associate features, su [ ... ]
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Joe’s Crab restaurants are all across the United States; some are casual seaside shacks and others are high-end establishments. But how can so many restaurants share the same or similar name? Under U.S. trademark law, if there is no federal registration, the rights to a mark are local and depend on who first used the mark in good faith. That means that multiple restaurants with th [ ... ]
In 2023, “Heart on My Sleeve,” a song with Drake and The Weeknd’s voices, began racking up views on Spotify. The problem was that neither Drake nor The Weeknd released or performed the song. It was artificially generated based on hours of their music.
An industry turned on its headWhile the music world has been familiar with AI for some time, generative AI’s ab [ ... ]
The concept of anthropomorphic objects is ancient.
Long before artificial intelligence entered our homes, our pockets and our vocabulary, it existed in our imaginations. Across continents and cultures, humans have imagined inanimate objects coming to life, taking on human qualities and interacting with us.
The theme of imagining life into the lifeless existed in classic [ ... ]