sutton044

“ There is nothing new under the sun ”. In copyright law, this declaration from the Book of Ecclesiastes  t ranslates into an awkward tension between the need to limit slavish copying (to prevent free-riding), on the one hand, and the need to allow a degree of derivative creation, on the other (to avoid stifling creativity). But where do we draw the line? This is the fraught question that Omri Rachum-Twaig addresses in his recent book, “Copyright law and derivative works ”. The author revisits the right to make derivative works through the lenses of cognitive psychology and genre theory, both of which study creativity. The author argues that copyright law has much to learn from these two disciplines, both in the way that they understand creativity and how to best encourage it. "Why these two fields", you ask? Perhaps, according to the author, it is because each of them investigates a different aspect of creativity: cognitive psychology focuses on creativity as a process, whi...

Big Red Can copyright vest in mascots and characters? This, in a nutshell, is the question that the Italian Supreme Court had to address in Ralph v Mediaset and Others , decision 14635/2018 [Katpat to Valentina Borgese for the heads up and the text of the decision] .  The Italian court answered in the affirmative, and provided some helpful guidance on copyright subsistence, derivative works, and infringement. What happened? In 1979 Ralph Carey created what would become the mascot of the Western Kentucky University (WKU) basketball team, a red character named Big Red. In 2009 he brought proceedings before the Milan Court of First Instance against broadcasters RTI and Mediaset and the creator of well-known TV programme Striscia La Notizia , claiming that the likeness of mascot/TV character Gabibbo (‘operating’ since 1990) would infringe copyright in Big Red. The Milan court sided with Carey: in 2012 it held that Gabibbo infringed copyright in Big Red. It also awarded damages for EU...