Contracts Archives - Joshua D. Waterston, Esq.

Not So Happy Together – The Turtles vs. SiriusXM Copyright Case

Joshua D. Waterston, Esq.2022-05-13T14:11:49-04:00August 31st, 2021|Contracts, Copyright, Intellectual Property|

What happens when Congress is unable - for almost 50 years - to figure out how to protect recorded music? Specifically, music recorded before 1972? Messy litigation involving the Turtles is what happens. First, some background. Almost 50 years ago, Congress passed the Sound Recording Amendment to the 1909 Copyright Act, which provided copyright protection to sound recordings created on or after February 15, 1972. However, there was no Federal law requiring that royalties be paid for works created before that date until Congress unanimously passed the Music Modernization Act in 2018. This law included a provision that required digital [...Read More...]

Supreme Court Fights Abuses of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act

Joshua D. Waterston, Esq.2022-06-28T15:03:21-04:00June 29th, 2021|Contracts, Intellectual Property, Privacy, Trade Secrets|

For 35 years, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) has been a powerful weapon in law enforcement's arsenal against computer hackers. Essentially, it criminalized the standard definition of hacking - accessing information on a computer, where the user lacks authorization to do so. But what happens when someone is authorized to access the information, but then misuses the information? For example, a police officer who accepted a bribe and then accessed a vehicle database for non-law-enforcement purposes? This was the situation in Van Buren v. United States, which was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 3, 2021. [...Read More...]

Where Have All the Soundtracks Gone?

Joshua D. Waterston, Esq.2021-05-02T14:41:05-04:00April 30th, 2021|Contracts, Copyright, Intellectual Property, Licensing|

When fans of the TV show “Dawson’s Creek” watch it on Netflix, it will sound very different. This is because the theme song (Paula Cole’s "I Don't Want to Wait") has been replaced by Jann Arden’s "Run Like Mad" due to lack of streaming and DVD rights to the Paula Cole song. Dawson’s Creek has plenty of company in this area. Before the rise of streaming services, TV shows could save money by paying for a limited-time license for music rights, to cover the expected life of the show. The cost would be a fraction of the cost of perpetual [...Read More...]

Cease and Desist Letters – What Would Bill Murray Do?

Joshua D. Waterston, Esq.2020-09-30T10:49:03-04:00September 29th, 2020|Contracts, Copyright, Intellectual Property, Patent, Trade Secrets, Trademark|

In the world of intellectual property, the "Cease and Desist" letter is king. These are letters from attorneys for the owner of a work or invention, sent to an alleged infringer of the owner's intellectual property rights. The letters cite the legal basis for their claim, may threaten doom, destruction, and huge financial damages, and are often quite stern. Overly aggressive cease and desist letters can backfire. The Lumen Database website (originally chillingeffects.org) began as a project to track overzealous use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's enforcement mechanisms, spotlighting the most egregious examples of cease and desist letters. Such [...Read More...]

Post a Photograph to Social Media and License it to the World?

Joshua D. Waterston, Esq.2020-04-30T04:00:50-04:00April 30th, 2020|Contracts, Copyright, Intellectual Property|

Authors, beware! The next time you post your work on social media, you may lose significant ownership rights. A core principle of U.S. copyright law is that the author controls how their work is used, and can earn money from that use if they wish. But what happens when a photographer posts her work on Instagram and a large corporation uses it without compensating the photographer? This is exactly what happened to Stephanie Sinclair, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, who has been published in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. On September 22, 2015, Sinclair posted a photo to [...Read More...]

Force Majeure Clauses and the Coronavirus Pandemic

Joshua D. Waterston, Esq.2020-03-27T22:21:17-04:00March 27th, 2020|Contracts, Intellectual Property|

A month ago, we were at work and school. Grocery stores were full of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, flour, and milk. “Flattening the curve” meant that I needed to lose a few pounds. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has now swept through the United States like a hurricane. Businesses have been shuttered, supply chains are stretched or broken, and employees are required to work at home – if they haven’t been laid off completely. During this pandemic, what do you do if your business can’t pay its rent, ship an order, or otherwise fulfill contractual obligations? Most business contracts include a [...Read More...]

The Laughable Non-Disclosure Agreement

Joshua D. Waterston, Esq.2020-09-29T23:11:07-04:00May 4th, 2018|Contracts, Intellectual Property|

Summary: Update Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) to match the new digital reality. Businesses should be proactive to address outdated provisions in NDAs before problems occur. Remember the olden days of fax machines? You’d receive a fax with a long disclaimer at the bottom, saying something like, “This fax may contain super-secret information which could endanger our company, our world, and even our universe, if it should fall into the wrong hands. If you receive this fax by accident, you must immediately return the fax to the sender, or we will send our goons to find and severely punish you.” The question [...Read More...]

“The Glacier is Too Cold” – Protecting Your Right to Complain

Joshua D. Waterston, Esq.2021-08-24T10:48:29-04:00June 15th, 2017|Contracts, Intellectual Property|

Can a business prevent an unreasonable customer from posting a negative (and unfair) online review to Yelp, Facebook, Amazon, or other online platform? For example, a reviewer wrote, “Do Not Camp Anywhere Near Here – You Will Freeze” when posting a one-star TripAdvisor review of the Columbia Ice Field in Canada.* Yes, that’s right – the reviewer was upset that the ice field was too cold. You just can’t please some people… A client recently asked me to include a non-disparagement clause in his customer agreement. He was concerned that a customer might violate the agreement but threaten to post [...Read More...]