One of the latest lawsuits out of Vegas has nothing to do with gambling, skin shows or even entertainment.
It has to do with subs. The kind you eat.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, Gevork Boyadzhyan opened up a sandwich shop in Las Vegas and called it Subway Avenue.
As you might imagine, the owners of the Subway chain of sandwich shops, Doctor’s Associates Inc., were none too amused. They filed suit in U.S. District Court for trademark infringement and cybersquatting (because of the potential confusion about the name).
So now Subway Avenue has reportedly become Sub Avenue.
It’s Vegas, Baby.
Categories: Media Law · Media Law Case of the Week
Tagged: trademark
Finally, common sense prevails.
The fact that others can hear copyrighted music when your cell phone rings does not make you a copyright violator. That’s what a federal judge ruled last week in the U.S. District Court (Southern Division of New York State).
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was suing Verizon and AT&T and argued that, in essence, when one’s cell phone rings, it creates a “public performance” of the copyrighted work, and THAT was copyright infringement.
Keep in mind that cell phone users already PAY royalty fees when they buy the ring tone.
The decision states, “ASCAP has not shown any infringement of its members’ rights by the playing of ringtones in public from Verizon’s customers’ telephones. The customers are not liable for copyright infringement, and neither is Verizon.”
For an article about the case and a link to the decision, see Wired’s piece here.
Categories: Media Law Case of the Week
Tagged: copyright
Originally I planned to focus this post on a great documentary on the U.S. Supreme Court that C-SPAN has been showing — and which is also available for viewing online. I showed the piece to my media law class, and they were more interested than one might expect for a group of 20-somethings at 8 a.m. in the morning. I definitely recommend it for other media law teachers.
But while nosing around the C-SPAN site, I discovered a wealth of videos on everything from press conferences to in-depth interviews. I even found dozens of videos featuring one of my journalism heroes, Helen Thomas.
So if you are looking for clips from politicians, educators, journalists and business people, give the C-SPAN Video Library a try.
Categories: Media Law · teaching
Tagged: C-Span, supreme court
So I guess Russians can say that Stalin was responsible for thousands of deaths after all.
Russian autocratic leader Josef Stalin’s grandson sued a Russian newspaper for libel after an article referred to Stalin as having sent thousands to their deaths. Today a Russian court ruled against the grandson.
The case had some in the country wondering if the government and courts would try to change history by denying Stalin’s responsibility.
Will the grandson appeal? We will know within five days.
Categories: Media Law Case of the Week
True confession: I went from Mac Hater to Mac Lover in the course of one hour.
I’m a PC person — I use PCs at home and, most of the time, at work. I do, however, teach one class on Macs. It was like trying to speak a foreign language. I’d try to hit my shortcut buttons and they didn’t work. Everything was in a different place. I didn’t know what I was doing, and quite frankly, blamed the Mac instead of me.
And then last week I was introduced to iWeb, the fabulous web site creation program on Macs. I’m in love. The designs (most of them, anyway) are beautiful and it is incredibly easy to use. Although I know HTML and CSS, I didn’t have to use any. And that got me thinking: What if this program — or one like it — could be used on multimedia news sites?
Not only would the sites be cleaner and easier to use for the news consumer, but it also would be easy for almost anyone on staff to update and tweak the sites. (Admit it, most news sites are not beautiful.)
And now I’m off to figure out a way to talk my husband into getting a Mac … 
Categories: technology
Tagged: iWeb, software, technology
“Don’t upset the apple cart …”
Maybe that old saying should be changed to, “Don’t upset Apple Inc.”
Peggy Watt at PC World writes a great piece about Apple Inc.’s attempt to claim that an Australian company is infringing on its trademark with its logo. She mixes humor and good ole’ media law facts to create the interesting piece.
Here, by the way, are the trademarks:
Categories: Media Law Case of the Week
Tagged: trademark
The silence is deafening.
It sounds cliche, but I can think of no other way to describe the astounding lack of local media coverage of a reported sexual assault of a College at Brockport (SUNY) student by three men. The student was walking home on a village street and assaulted, according to reports.
The college media are covering it, as you can see here. But I have yet to see any mention of it in the mainstream media that covers the area. By the way, the mainstream media are located only about a half-hour away — less if you don’t drive at peak times.
How many days have passed? FOUR.
The College at Brockport did the right thing and made its students aware of the situation with a Campus Safety Alert e-mail. Thank goodness it did, because the community certainly isn’t learning about it through the mainstream media. (In the interest of full disclosure I will tell you I teach at The College at Brockport.)
But what happened to the local mainstream media?
I started wondering how on earth they could miss this big of a story and came to only one conclusion: the impact of the job cuts in the reporting industry are showing.
The Democrat & Chronicle, the local daily newspaper for this area, cut at least 59 jobs last year alone. It’s a Gannett company, so it also instituted the now-famous job furloughs.
The TV stations, with all due respect, appear to have been pretty thinly staffed since I arrived here a year ago.
So is missing the sexual assault of a college student the only thing the mainstream media have missed? I doubt it.
My hope is that as more and more stories are missed, media companies will realize they must hire more staff.
My fear is they simply don’t care.
Categories: journalism standards · uncovered stories
Tagged: future of journalism, future of newspapers
