Today I will be writing on topics that involve important legal matters in the entertainment field.  One such legal matter involved the “Crystal Skull” from the Indiana Jones moviewww.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/indiana-jones-lawsuit-seeks-hollywood-399236.  There was a skull uncovered in Belize in1924 by two archeologists. They brought the skull to the United States and put it on display and made money from showing.  The National Institute of Archeology in Belize is suing the archeologists for illegally taking the skull out of Belize and Walt Disney and Lucas/Paramount for using a similar skull in the Indiana Jones movie for profits they made from the look and feel of the skull that they have trademark claims in. According to Gordon Firemark, an entertainment attorney it would seem to be ridiculous that they would be able to win any trademark or punitive copyright claim from the movie’s use of the look and feel of the skull, especially since the claim is over 100 years old.  The archeologists have since died, but had given the skull to a friend, who is now also being sued. 

The second legal issue involves copyright infringement.  In the case UMG v Veoh http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/viacom-youtube-lawsuit-334889, the lawsuit involves an ISP video-sharing site (Veoh) downloading videos from another site and uploading them to their site.  The Ninth circuit court had found that in order for there to be infringement of a copyright there has to be actual knowledge of infringement material. The copyright holder must first alert the ISP of the infringement material.  Then in a later case, Viacom v YouTube, the Second Circuit Court drew a distinction between actual and red flag knowledge and whether this distinction effects the disposition in the Veoh case.  The second issue that was raised involved the question of, “if there is no knowledge requirement”, does a copyright holder need to show that the service provider possesses more than the ability to move and block access to the material on the site in order to have a right to infringement claims.  According to Firemark, this is a hot issue and it seems that the Ninth and Second circuit courts are trying to reconcile their interpretations on the issue before it goes to a higher court. These two cases are going to lay the ground rules for what ISP has to do to discover and deal with copyright infringement.

The last legal issue involved copyright issues also.   It was called the Royal Pains lawsuithttp://www.medialawbytesandpieces.com/files/2012/07/Forest-Park.pdf.  Hayden Christenden, an actor, filed a lawsuit against Universal arguing he had an idea for a TV show that he had pitched to Universal in 2007-2008.  He claimed Universal stole the idea and created their own show based on his ideas.    According to Firemark, this could be a quasi contract claim.  It did not support copyright infringement.  It was a “pre-emption issue “.  Does copyright law pre-empt these kinds of state law claims. Part of the test to determine if state law is pre-empted was (1) does the subject matter of the state law fall within the subject matter of the copyright act, and (2) whether that right asserted under state law is equivalent to the exclusive rights protected by copyright act. The court found that this was not preemption.  There were additional features to the contract claims so the decision of the district court to dismiss the case was reversed.  They made the decision to apply state law.  What the case pended on was that you need proof of extra elements beyond use and copying and you need qualified differences between quasi contract claims and copyright laws.