A Melbourne restaurant owner recently found out the fine line between inspiration and copying or passing off. You may have recently read about Kanye West writing a cease and desist letter to a suburban Melbourne hamburger restaurant called “College Dropout Burgers”. Mark Elkhouri had been inspired by Kanye and his music when setting up his …
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NFT’s are once again colliding with existing legal frameworks governing intellectual property ownership, and from the outset it appears as though NFT’s are facing an uphill battle. This once again highlights the importance of understanding the laws governing intellectual property ownership and the associated rights. Hermès Birkin vs MetaBirkins Hermès International (Hermès) has recently filed …
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Admit it, you’ve already solved today’s wordle, right?! Around the world people have been buying into the Wordle phenomenon. For those not playing along at home, Wordle is a five letter word guessing game, which in itself is not a new concept. However, Wordle has attracted mass appeal due to the ability to share the …
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NFTs and Spice DAO (which stands for Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) have made the news for thinking that the laws of copyright don’t apply to the virtual realm and having their error corrected publicly by users on Twitter. Jodorowsky’s Dune Back in June 2021, POF considered the question of what a purchaser is actually acquiring when …
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The Australian Government has been assigned copyright in the Aboriginal Flag as part of a $20 million deal to purchase the rights from its creator, paving the way for its use without permission or the payment of a fee. Luritja artist and activist Harold Thomas designed the flag, which has become a symbol of Aboriginal …
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In the rush to file a trade mark application, it is important not to overlook the issue of copyright ownership where a mark includes an artistic work such as a logo. In Mia Nathan-Joyce[1], the Assistant Commissioner upheld the trade mark examiner’s objection to registration of a logo trade mark on the basis that its …
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Many businesses face the threat of copycats. Therefore, it is essential to be proactive and protect your business as much as possible. State of Escape, the business behind the popular perforated neoprene tote bags, has had its fair share of copycats. In a Q&A below, with Anita Brown of Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick, their business’ co-founder, …
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Since 2015, copyright holders have been able to seek injunctions against Internet Service Providers requiring them to block their customers from accessing sites which contain infringing content by way of Section 115A of Australia’s Copyright Act 1968. These provisions, equivalents of which exist in a number of other jurisdictions, have been colloquially known as “whack-a-mole” …
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Copyright works can often be the result of input from more than one person. The work will be considered one work (work of joint authorship) if the work has been produced by the collaboration of the authors and the contribution of each is not separate from the contribution of the others. Otherwise there will be two or …
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In Pokémon Company International, Inc. v Redbubble Ltd [2017] FCA 1541 the Applicant, who is responsible for the licensing of Pokémon related products, alleged that the Respondent had breached the Australian Consumer Law by making misleading and deceptive representations and also infringed its copyright in various Pokémon characters. Redbubble provides an online platform for artists …
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