Posted

by

Tattoos-copyright-1184219605-300x200You’re in the midst of doomscrolling, when you decide to take a mental health break and post a photo to your socials from a happier (pre-pandemic) time. As you search through your photos, you find a great one of yourself that a friend-of-a-friend took. You’re about to post the photo when you remember a post that you read on this very blog about the potential copyright consequences of using a photo taken by someone else. You aren’t a celebrity—yet—but you decide that it’s best to use a photo that you took yourself. A couple of minutes later you post a throwback selfie in which you are smiling as you proudly show off your very first tattoo. It took you days to decide on the design and hours for the tattoo artist to bring to life. Even today you still get compliments on it, and some people have even recognized you solely based on the fact that you have a very big and very prominent tattoo of Pegasus riding a dragon while eating rainbow sherbet and shooting lasers from a cat. Your post starts racking up likes from your friends (and followers)—when all of the sudden you get a DM from the tattoo artist informing you that she never authorized you to display her copyrighted work on social media and demanding that you take the photo down. Unfortunately, now you’ll be spending the rest of your evening trying to figure out how any rights your tattoo artist has in works permanently inked upon your body may impact your own rights to use (and license) your own likeness.

Continue Reading →

Posted

by

Ninety percent of the digital data in the world has been generated in the past two years, and with the growth of search engines, social media sites, smart cars and the Internet of Things (IoT), that pace is just accelerating. One possible solution lies in our very DNA. In “When Will DNA Solve the Data Storage Crisis?” colleague Craig A. de Ridder explores the intriguing potential and developing technology of this application of the “DNA of Things” (DoT).

Posted

by

As regulations and best practices regarding online terms continues to impose increasing requirements on operators of websites, apps and online services, a basic set of online terms can now encompass as many as half a dozen documents! One just needs to glance at the footer of most any website to see the array of policies that are now needed to minimally address commercial and legal considerations. A normal schema of online terms includes: Terms of Service, an Acceptable Use Policy, a Copyright/DMCA Policy, a Privacy Policy, a Cookie Policy, and a California Privacy Notice. All of these various policies typically wrap up into the Terms of Service. From a practical standpoint, and in some instances out of legal necessity, it is best to break these policies into separate documents and utilize hyperlinks and other embedded text to create a structure that can be navigated electronically. To date, this has seemed to be a reasonable approach and is particularly favored by web and app designers who strive to create clean screens with streamlined text.

But beware—nesting hyperlinks to various policies within a master set of terms can lead to trouble.

Continue Reading →

Posted

by

tZERO-Logo-300x157With bitcoin prices rocketing nearly 300% from trough to peak when COVID-19 lockdowns were announced in March 2020 and then relaxed in July 2020, I thought I would revisit a blockchain company we discussed earlier last year to see how it has progressed and been valued by the financial community: Overstock.

Continue Reading →

Posted

by

iStock-486463910-patent-innovation-300x200Many companies are increasingly looking to the federal government during COVID-19 for liquidity or other financial assistance. Colleague Drew Schulte recently spoke with host Joel Simon on Pillsbury’s Industry Insights podcast and highlighted a variety of strategies available to companies with intellectual property assets (and particularly patents or patentable assets) to reduce costs and to generate revenue by monetizing their IP assets.

Continue Reading →

Posted

by

Recently, Pillsbury’s Deborah Thoren-Peden sat down with a panel of experts that included Millicent Calinog Tracey (former Wells Fargo SVP), Samantha Ettus (founder and CEO of Park Place Payments) and Pillsbury partner John Barton. They discussed how businesses and the customer experience have been impacted due to COVID-19 and how banks, fintechs and payment companies can maximize opportunities and mitigate risk with increased demand in the digital payments space.

Continue Reading →

Posted

by

Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFT) continue to pose difficult and controversial legal questions under U.S. securities, commodities and tax laws. In “Legal Implications of Secondary SAFT Sales,” Daniel N. Budofsky, Laura E. Watts, Riaz A. Karamali and James T. Chudy explore these questions at length.

 

Posted

by

USPTO-seal-300x300Though the USPTO typically examines trademark applications in the order received, special circumstances can from time to time justify examination out of order. The USPTO has determined that the COVID-19 pandemic is such a special circumstance, recognizing the need to bring COVID-19-related medical products and services to market as quickly as possible.

Continue Reading →

Posted

by

GettyImages-1166134576-ai-privacy-300x183As the world continues to deal with the unprecedented challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have emerged as a potentially formidable tool in detecting and predicting outbreaks. In fact, by some measures the technology has proven to be a step ahead of humans in tracking the spread of COVID-19 infections. In December 2019, it was a website-leveraging AI technology that provided one of the key early warnings of an unknown form of pneumonia spreading in Wuhan, China. Soon after, information sharing among medical professionals followed as experts tried to understand the extent of the unfolding public health crisis. While humans eventually acted on these warnings, the early detection enabled through use of AI-supported data aggregation demonstrates both the promise and potential concerns associated with these systems.

Continue Reading →

Posted

by

SEC-logo-300x300As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect industries worldwide, companies are working to stay abreast of—and to proactively react to—the effects and the unique risks of this pandemic. The inherent uncertainty concerning timeframe and magnitude of market disruptions has caused many companies, and even industries, to reevaluate status quo operations and adjust both short-term plans and long-term risk assessments. In light of this, the Division of Corporation Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently released guidance for public companies regarding its current views on such companies’ risk factor disclosures in light of COVID-19’s distinctive disruptions.

Continue Reading →