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15 Jun 17:23

Long, unhappy post on Hart v. EA

by Rebecca Tushnet
Hart v. Electronic Arts, Inc., No. 11-3750 (3d Cir. May 21, 2013)



Hart, a former Rutgers football player who saw significant success on the field, appealed EA’s district court win against his right of publicity claim based on EA’s use of his likeness and biographical information (size, weight, jersey number, typical attire of visor and armband) in its NCAA Football videogames. The court of appeals reversed.


Unsurprisingly, the court began with reference to the NCAA’s amateurism rules, which precluded Hart from making any money from his status, but didn’t stop the NCAA from monetizing his popularity.


NCAA Football comes out every year, and allows users “to experience the excitement and challenge of college football” by interacting with “over 100 virtual teams and thousands of virtual players.”  Users typically play by choosing two teams to compete against each other.  The game “assigns a stadium for the match-up and populates it with players, coaches, referees, mascots, cheerleaders and fans.”  There are also multi-game play modes.  Dynasty Mode allows users to control a college program for up to thirty seasons, allowing players to recruit high school players from a randomly generated pool. Race for the Heisman/Campus Legend mode allows users to control a single user-made virtual player from high school through college, making choices about practices, academics and social activities.  EA licenses rights to team-related content from the NCAA, but does not license likeness and identity rights for collegiate players—unlike some of its other franchises.  The game’s success depends on its focus on realism and detail, “from realistic sounds, to game mechanics, to team mascots. This focus on realism also ensures that the ‘over 100 virtual teams’ in the game are populated by digital avatars that resemble their real-life counterparts and share their vital and biographical information.” This included a Rutgers avatar that resembled Hart.  While users can change avatars’ appearances and vital statistics, certain details were immutable: the player’s home state, home town, team, and class year.  


Hart sued based on the use of his likeness/biographical and career statistics in the game, and also over the use of an actual photo of him in a photo montage visible only when players select Rutgers as their team.  Preview: This last was held transformative and fair because it’s a montage, while the rest is not transformative because it’s a realistic videogame.  If those becauses don’t make any sense to you, welcome to the club!


As you know, Bob, videogames are fully protected by the First Amendment.  Brown v. Entm’t Merchs. Ass’n, 131 S. Ct. 2729 (2011).  However, such protection can be trumped by other protected rights.  EA conceded for purposes of the appeal that it misappropriated his identity for commercial exploitation; this required balancing the interests underlying the right to free expression with the interests in protecting the right of publicity. Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broad. Co., 433 U.S. 562 (1977) (also a cite to Eldred and to defamation law).


The court then engaged in a review of existing case law.  The basic theory of the right of publicity is that people have the right to enjoy the fruits of their own industry; it’s unfair to allow others to commercialize, exploit, or capitalize on another’s name or reputation.  People’s names and likenesses belong to them as property because they are things of value. New Jersey follows the Restatement (Second) of Torts approach that “[o]ne who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name or likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of privacy,” and that this is a property right.  The Third Restatement adopted a freestanding right of publicity claim, but New Jersey has yet to adopt it.


In New Jersey, name, likeness, and endorsement therefore carry value, and unauthorized use harms the person by “diluting the value of the name and depriving that individual of compensation.”  The goal of the right of publicity is therefore to protect an individual’s property interest in their identity gained through labor and effort, and to encourage further investment in this property interest.  See Zacchini (“[T]he State’s interest in permitting a right of publicity. . . . is closely analogous to the goals of patent and copyright law, focusing on the right of the individual to reap the reward of his endeavors . . . .”).  Relatedly, the court rejected the idea that no right of publicity was necessary because players are financially rewarded through endorsement, sponsorship, and the like—this doesn’t apply to college athletes, and the NCAA most recently estimated that “[l]ess than [two] in 100, or 1.6 percent, of NCAA senior football players will get drafted by a National Football League (NFL) team.” Ryan Hart was in the nearly 99%.  (So does that mean that in our future case-by-case balancing we do get to count those other economic opportunities against granting control to celebrities who are getting paid?)


Zacchini called for balancing of First Amendment interests, but didn’t set forth a systematic analytic framework for doing so.  Lower courts have tried several approaches.  The court identified three as of interest: the execrable Doe v. TCI “predominant use” test, the trademark-based Rogers test, and the copyright-based transformative use test.  It picked the transformative use test as the most appropriate.


As for Doe v. TCI, asking whether the predominant use of a celebrity’s identity is commercial is “subjective at best, arbitrary at worst, and in either case calls upon judges to act as both impartial jurists and discerning art critics. These two roles cannot co-exist.”  The court declined to get into whether using Hart’s identity added anything to the “First Amendment expressiveness” of the game:


Such reasoning, however, leads down a dangerous and rightly-shunned road: adopting Appellant’s suggested analysis would be tantamount to admitting that it is proper for courts to analyze select elements of a work to determine how much they contribute to the entire work’s expressiveness. Moreover, as a necessary (and insidious) consequence, the Appellant’s approach would suppose that there exists a broad range of seemingly expressive speech that has no First Amendment value.”


(This criticism is also true of transformative use, especially as applied here, but hey!)


The court then rejected Rogers because it would “potentially immunize a broad swath of tortious activity.”  (You know, like New York Times v. Sullivan.)  The Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition restricts the right of publicity to “use for purposes of trade,” which does not “ordinarily include the use of a person’s identity in news reporting, commentary, entertainment, works of fiction or nonfiction, or in advertising that is incidental to such uses” unless a name or likeness is used solely to attract attention to an unrelated work.  The Restatement specifically mentions uses in articles in fan magazines, feature stories on entertainment programs, unauthorized biographies, novels, plays, and motion pictures. 


The court didn’t find the cases (allegedly) adopting Rogers persuasive.  Parks v. LaFace, for example, was in tension with the transformative use test applied in ETW v. Jireh, decided by another Sixth Circuit panel a month later.  And the Third Circuit had already, in dicta, expressed doubt that Rogers could apply beyond a title.  Facenda v. N.F.L. Films, Inc., 542 F.3d 1007 (3d Cir. 2008).  Though Rogers may be useful in “trademark-like” right of publicity cases, whatever that means, it wasn’t appropriate here (since it would mean that EA won).  Rogers is a “blunt instrument” that doesn’t carefully calibrate the balancing of “two fundamental protections: the right of free expression and the right to control, manage, and profit from one’s own identity.”  (Although the last time I checked, only one of those was in the Bill of Rights.  Also, categorical balancing is often used in First Amendment cases, to avoid chilling effects—case by case determination of “transformativeness” has significant costs that have to be balanced while we’re balancing.)


The problem the court had with Rogers was demonstrated by EA’s argument, which was that Hart’s likeness wasn’t wholly unrelated to NCAA football, and the game wasn’t an ad for an unrelated product, therefore EA won.  EA argued that Hart “should be unable to assert a claim for appropriating his likeness as a football player precisely because his likeness was used for a game about football. Adopting this line of reasoning threatens to turn the right of publicity on its head.”  (That presupposes exactly the question to be answered, which is how far the right of publicity may constitutionally extend.  Also, imagine this statement made about a conventional print biography.  Or about a news photograph accompanying a story about the Rutgers football team.  Or Joyce Carol Oates’ next roman a clef about a college football player who sues a video game company. Etc.)  You see, Hart’s career means that the target audience for his “merchandise and performances” would be sports fans, so products “appropriating and exploiting his identity” would do best with them.  But under Rogers, all products (and here we mean “expressive works protected by the First Amendment”) targeting the sports fan market would, as a matter of course, relate to Hart and fall outside his right of publicity.  “It cannot be that the very activity by which Appellant achieved his renown now prevents him from protecting his hard-won celebrity.”  (No, but it can be that engaging in speech about the very activity by which Hart achieved his renown prevents him from maintaining a successful claim against the speakers; what we have here is a failure to define the scope of the right, or explain why it should trump the interest in engaging in nondefamatory noncommercial speech.)


For these reasons, Rogers was inapplicable, though the Rogers court was right to note that the right of publicity doesn’t have consumer confusion as an element and was therefore “potentially broader” than trademark.  Of course, this is a reason why the right of publicity does less well in any balancing test than trademark—deceptive speech is easier to regulate than nondeceptive speech, at least when it does harm (Alvarez)—not a reason why a right of publicity claim trumps freedom of speech when an equivalent trademark claim, supposedly protecting both the public and the trademark owner, wouldn’t be sufficiently weighty to do so.  But that’s not what the Hart court says, since we are in topsy-turvy land: “the right of publicity is broader and, by extension, protects a greater swath of property interests. Thus, it would be unwise for us to adopt a test that hews so closely to traditional trademark principles.”  (Traditional pre-Sullivan defamation law protected a “greater swath” of personality interests than current defamation law; that made it unconstitutional.  And one could say, as Justice Rehnquist once did, that the US flag is the “property” of the American people, and yet flagburning statutes are still unconstitutional.  Calling an interest “property” doesn’t make it First Amendment-immune.  Even Eldred and Golan don’t go that far—not that any legislature adopting a right of publicity has engaged in even the token factfinding backing up the CTEA.)


So, the court turned to a “broader, more nuanced test,” transformative use.  Copyright was a better analogy than trademark, because the right of publicity is an economic right against misappropriation.  It applies to noncommercial speech too, offering “protection to a form of intellectual property that society deems to have social utility.”  Therefore, taking transformativeness from copyright’s fair use test was appropriate, especially since transformative uses are less likely to interfere with the economic interests implicated by the right of publicity.  Of course, transformativeness may include factual reporting and fictionalized portrayal along with parody and satire.  The inquiry, as Comedy III v. Saderup said, was “in a sense more quantitative than qualitative, asking whether the literal and imitative or the creative elements predominate in the work.”  (Wasn’t that the test the court just rightly rejected from Doe v. TCI?) 


If the marketability of the challenged work doesn’t derive primarily from the fame of the celebrity depicted, there’s generally no violation of the right of publicity.  However, even if the work’s marketability does derive from the celebrity’s fame, it can still be transformative.  The question is whether the celebrity likeness is one of the “raw materials” from which an original work is synthesized, or whether the depiction is the “very sum and substance” of the work. (But of course biographies and news reporting are fine!  The reason why is … left as an exercise for the reader.)  So the question is whether the celebrity’s likeness “has become primarily the defendant’s own expression rather than the celebrity’s likeness,” and “expression” has to be “expression of something other than the likeness of the celebrity.” 


(Not that word portraits will never be in jeopardy.  The thing about medium discrimination is that it’s invisible to the people engaging in it.  The work of portraying a celebrity in a textual biography is so self-evidently transformative creative “work” of the writer's "own" that the court feels no need to explain why it’s qualitatively different from the work of a portraitist.  The work required to create a realistic video game, which involves extensive programming and creative design, by contrast appears to the court mere reproductive labor.  I would still think this was dumb, but I wouldn’t be as aggravated if courts would outright say “the right of publicity, though in theory having something to do with ‘name,’ is only a right in images, at least as applied outside the context of false endorsement.”)


Winter v. DC Comics, 69 P.3d 473 (Cal. 2003) expanded on the California rule: “[a]n artist depicting a celebrity must contribute something more than a ‘merely trivial’ variation, [but must create] something recognizably ‘his own’ in order to qualify for legal protection.”  ETW v. Jireh decided that a painting was transformative because it was a collage of Tiger Woods with other golf greats. 
The Hart court, inexplicably, calls the painting in question “a photograph of Tiger Woods set among a collage of other, golf-related photographs.”  ETW, the court said, was “somewhere in the middle …, given that it focuses on the use of photographs (literal depictions of celebrities), but adds a transformative aspect to the work, thereby altering the meaning behind the use of the celebrity’s likeness.”  Winter was at the far end of the spectrum—depicting Johnny and Edgar Winter as half-worm comic book villains was obviously transformative—while Comedy III  was clearly nontransformative: mere literal depictions of celebrities in a different medium.


This leads to Kirby v. Sega of America, Inc., 50 Cal. Rptr. 3d 607 (Cal. Ct. App. 2006), finding transformative use of a musician’s image to create a video game character who was “a reporter in the far flung future.”  Sega seemed to have copied Kirby’s signature phrases, hair style, and clothing choice, but differences in appearances and movement also existed.  This additional new expression was enough to be transformative, even without a particular meaning or message.


In No Doubt v. Activision Publishing, Inc., 122 Cal. Rptr. 3d 397 (Cal. Ct. App. 2011), by contrast, the court found a violation of the right of publicity when the video game at issue used “immutable” images of the “real” musicians and didn’t transform their context, instead having them perform rock songs as they did in life.  Even though the avatars could be manipulated to perform at fanciful venues or to sing songs the real band wouldn’t ever sing, and even though the game had many other creative elements, they were still “exact depictions” of the musicians doing their thing.  The use of highly realistic digital depictions “was motivated by a desire to capitalize on the band’s fan-base,” so there was a violation of the right of publicity. (But fan magazines and entertainment programs are fine!  Because … they’re not video games?)


The Hart court concluded that transformative use struck the best balance between the interests at issue “because it provides courts with a flexible — yet uniformly applicable — analytical framework.”  Unlike Rogers, transformativeness allows courts “to account for the fact that misappropriation can occur in any market segment, including those related to the celebrity.”  (And to ignore the difference between commercial and noncommercial speech, and deceptive and nondeceptive speech.  No big deal.)  But, unlike Doe v. TCI, transformativeness is “more circumscribed,” focusing on specific aspects of a work “that speak to whether it was merely created to exploit a celebrity’s likeness.”  Transformativeness “recognizes that if First Amendment protections are to mean anything in right of publicity claims, courts must begin by considering the extent to which a work is the creator’s own expression.”  The marketing power of the celebrity identity is a secondary question, since the balancing suggested by Zacchini can’t begin and end with commercial purpose or value.  Transformative use “effectively restricts right of publicity claims to a very narrow universe of expressive works.”  (Categorical balancing, with a focus on avoiding chilling effects on protected speech, might ask whether this game, no pun intended, is worth the candle.) 


And the test was consistent with the outcomes of other cases, including Estate of Presley v. Russen, 513 F. Supp. 1339 (D.N.J. 1981), which held that an Elvis impersonator’s act was subject to right of publicity claims because “entertainment that is merely a copy or imitation, even if skillfully and accurately carried out, does not really have its own creative component and does not have a significant value as pure entertainment.”  (Which totally explains why people go to see impersonators instead of watching video of the original!  Oh, wait, it doesn’t.  Also, Tina Fey would like a word.)  As in Zacchini, the Elvis impersonator “appropriated the ‘very activity [live stage show] by which [Presley initially] acquired his reputation.”   Where a work contains “‘merely a copy or imitation’ of the celebrity’s identity … there can be no First Amendment impediment to a right of publicity claim.”  (Except for biographies and news reports/photography.) 


Transformativeness was also, in the court’s view, consistent with the Restatement test, because the examples listed as protected in the comments to the Restatement “all exemplify the sort of transformative uses that would generally pass the analysis set forth in Comedy III.”  Thus, “already-existing First Amendment protections in right of publicity cases apply to video games with the same force as to ‘biographies, documentaries, docudramas, and other expressive works depicting real-life figures.’”  Except that they win and EA loses; other than that, totally the same.


Here, Hart’s protected “identity” included not only his likeness but also his biographical information; it was the combination that identified the digital avatar at issue as an in-game recreation of Hart:


This joint focus on both likeness and identifying information avoids a conflict with C.B.C. Distribution & Mktg., Inc. v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, L.P., 505 F.3d 818 (8th Cir. 2007), which held that use of major league baseball players’ records in a fantasy baseball game was protected by the First Amendment even against right of publicity claims because such information was publicly available. The presence of a digital avatar that recreates Appellant in a digital medium differentiates this matter from C.B.C.  


Okay, I lied: this is still aggravating.  Why does the presence of his image make a difference to the First Amendment issues?  Why do celebrities have more rights in pictures of them than in facts about them?  A case could, I imagine, be made having to do with “if value then right” and the greater value of the image in present-day society, but it’s being assumed rather than articulated. 


The court’s focus on visual representation causes it some uncertainty about the scope of its holding: “It remains an open question ... whether right of publicity claims can extend into the bygone days of 8-bit graphics and pixilated representations.”  Here, though, the digital avatar closely resembled the “genuine article” in hair color, hair style, skin tone, accessories, vital information, and biographical details.  “And while the inexorable march of technological progress may make some of the graphics in earlier editions of NCAA Football look dated or overly-computerized, we do not believe that video game graphics must reach (let alone cross) the uncanny valley to support a right of publicity claim.” 


Digitization was not itself transformative.  Recreating a likeness in a medium other than photographs or video can’t in itself satisfy the test, or the test wouldn’t make enough uses liable.  (A couple of things going on here—on top of the initial disregard of the work involved in creating photos and video as creative, contra copyright, there’s a different erasure of creative labor in video game design/programming, portraiture, and other non-reprographic methods of depicting people. Except words, of course.  Missing here and throughout is any explanation of why biographies etc. are transformative; this is what makes the opinion so clearly non-medium neutral.)


The next question was whether the context was transformative.  Here, digital Hart did what actual Hart did at Rutgers: he played football.  (*cough*Unauthorized biographies*cough*.)  Though users could alter the avatar’s appearance, and though EA created a game in which users could make those kinds of decisions, that wasn’t enough.  All games are interactive. 


True, video games have First Amendment protection because they’re interactive.  (Here I thought it was because they were expressive.)  But the balancing test isn’t about whether a work loses First Amendment protection in the abstract.  Rather, it’s about whether “the interests protected by the right of publicity are sufficient to surmount the already-existing First Amendment protections. As Zacchini demonstrated, the right of publicity can triumph even when an essential element for First Amendment protection is present.”  And “[i]f the mere presence of [the ability to alter an avatar] were enough, video game companies could commit the most blatant acts of misappropriation only to absolve themselves by including a feature that allows users to modify the digital likenesses.”  In a footnote, the court cautioned that interactivity wasn’t necessary for transformativeness, even for videogames.  Placing avatars of the Dalai Lama and the Pope in a violent “shoot-em-up” game with a mechanism for manipulating their characteristics wouldn’t automatically satisfy the test, though the court didn’t “discount the possibility” that such a juxtaposition of spiritual leaders and hyperviolence could be transformative “on other grounds.” 


Here, the interactivity was insufficient to transform Hart’s likeness into EA’s own expression.  NCAA Football sought to create a realistic depiction of college football, including realistic representations of players, seeking to capitalize on teams’ and players’ fan bases. This heightened realism made the games more enjoyable and thus more valuable.  Realistic depictions were the “sum and substance” of the digital players.  Since Hart’s unaltered likeness was “central to the core of the game experience,” the ability to change the digital avatars wasn’t important.  The ability to make minor alterations in the avatar, such as changes in his hair style, face, accessories, basic biographical information, or playing statistics, was insufficient, because an artist depicting a celebrity has to contribute more than a trivial variation. 


“[T]he ability to modify the avatar counts for little where the appeal of the game lies in users’ ability to play ‘as, or alongside’ their preferred players or team.”  Thus, even avatars with “superficial modifications” were suitable proxies or market subsitutes for the original.  And once a user made major changes to the avatar, it wasn’t a “use” of his identity and was irrelevant to the question of how his likeness was used in the game.


Also, it didn’t matter that Hart was a tiny part of the overall game.  Consideration of the other creative elements was improper, because transformativeness is about “how the celebrity’s identity is used in or is altered by other aspects of a work,” without consideration of “[w]holly unrelated elements.”  (Forrest Gump is looking pretty problematic!)  Consideration of the broader context of a work should be aimed at “whether this context acted upon the celebrity identity in a way that transformed it or imbued it with some added creativity beyond providing a ‘merely trivial variation.’”  So, you’d better have a good creative reason for your celebrity reference in your book, movie, etc.  Or just your video game.

An alternative holding, considering the creativity of the rest of the work, would allow “[a]cts of blatant misappropriation” as long as “the larger work, on balance, contained highly creative elements in great abundance. This concern is particularly acute in the case of media that lend themselves to easy partition such as video games.”  (Calling Gawker and the Huffington Post—those short celebrity stories and pictures, so easily partitionable from the rest of the site, are now going to get you in trouble!  Or would, if this were a medium-neutral decision.)


Just to make clear that video games are special, the court held that the photo of Hart that appeared in the 2009 edition of NCAA Football was not actionable.  It was a fleeting component of a montage, and was transformative under ETW: putting the photo in the context of a Rutgers montage “imbue[d] the image with additional meaning beyond simply being a representation of the player.” (Emphasis added—note the slippage between the celebrity and a particular image of the celebrity, which contributes to the medium discrimination at work here.  The photo puts Hart in the context of the Rutgers team, and that’s transformative.  But the avatar, which plays on the digital Rutgers team, is not.)  The use of the photo was protected by the First Amendment.


Judge Ambro dissented.  He agreed that EA took Hart’s identity and used it for commercial success, and that realism was key to the franchise’s profitability.  And he agreed that student athletes are exploited, and that this seemed unfair.  Further, he agreed that transformativeness was the proper test.  However, he interpreted and applied it differently.  (Not for nothing, giving further credence to the objection that transformativeness too requires judges to be art critics.)


Transformativeness balanced “an individual’s right to benefit financially when others use his identifiable persona for their own commercial benefit [with] the First Amendment interest in insulating from liability a creator’s decision to interweave real-life figures into its expressive work.”  But the inquiry couldn’t be limited to Hart’s identity alone, and EA shouldn’t be penalized for its commercial success or its realism, given “First Amendment protections traditionally afforded to true-to-life depictions of real figures and works produced for profit.”


First, the work should be evaluated in its entirety to figure out whether a work is “literal” or a celebrity likeness is simply one of the “raw materials” from which an original work is synthesized, as stated in Comedy III and reemphasized in Winter, which noted that the Autumn brothers were placed in a larger storyline with plenty of creativity of its own.  (In a footnote, the dissent pointed out that the use here wasn’t harming Hart’s commercial value—if anything, ticket sales for college football games and the value of Hart’s endorsement would have been augmented by the popularity of EA’s games.  This gets to the core of “misappropriation”—what is it we think counts as such?  To say that a person is harmed by not getting payment for a “use” presupposes the proper scope of the right.)


The majority erred in disregarding the non-Hart creative elements of the video game, conflicting with other courts’ approaches, such as that taken by ETW.  “My colleagues do not—and, in my view, cannot—explain how the photographic images of Woods were transformed if they limit their analysis to ‘how the celebrity’s identity is used.’” The use here, “creating digital avatars of football teams and placing them in an interactive medium designed for user interaction and manipulation” was “significantly more ‘transformative’ than the use in ETW, which simply combined several photographs into a photomontage.” (Who was reading the actual cases?  Of course I don’t think it matters legally that Rick Rush is a painter and not a collage artist, but this is embarrassing.)  To Judge Ambro, a narrow focus on an individual’s likeness, rather than on how it was incorporated into and transformed by the work as a whole, was flawed.  The whole was the better baseline.


Judge Ambro reminded us that the First Amendment protects “biographies, documentaries, docudramas, and other expressive works depicting real-life figures, whether the accounts are factual or fictional.”  And it protects them when they’re sold for profit.  Thus, using a celebrity name or likeness to increase an expressive work’s value and marketability doesn’t diminish its First Amendment protection.


The majority nodded in the direction of medium neutrality, but wasn’t medium neutral in its application of the test.  “EA’s use of real-life likenesses as ‘characters’ in its NCAA Football video game should be as protected as portrayals (fictional or nonfictional) of individuals in movies and books.”  Not all digital portrayals should be entitled to First Amendment protection, but they should be when a likeness, as part of a creative composition, “has been transformed into something more or different than what it was before.”  The majority further erred in focusing on the marketability of the game; the “effect on the market” factor of copyright fair use is not part of the right of publicity test as promulgated by Comedy III.  And even if it were appropriately considered, there was no argument that EA’s use decreased the commercial value of Hart’s identity or persona.  The majority wrongly equated the use of realism to increase profits with misappropriation.  “This approach is at odds with the First Amendment protection afforded to expressive works incorporating real-life figures. That protection does not depend on whether the characters are depicted realistically or whether their inclusion increases profits.” 


Judge Ambro therefore concluded that EA’s use of realistic avatars was entitled to First Amendment protection.  Hart’s mere likeness had been transformed into an avatar that, “along with the rest of a digitally created college football team, users can direct and manipulate in fictional football games.”  The many original graphics, videos, sound effects, and game scenarios allowed users to direct the play of a college football team with many different players.  Users weren’t reenacting real games, but directing the avatars in invented games and seasons.  Campus Legend/Dynasty Mode also allowed users to control players and teams across multiple seasons, allowing them to generate their own narratives. These were “imaginative transformations of the games played by real players.”  The permutations allowed for each player image added to this transformative interactivity.  These elements were not “[w]holly unrelated” to the use of Hart’s likeness, as the majority contended.  Users who selected the 2005 Rutgers team and didn’t change the avatar’s characteristics would experience the numerous creative elements of the game as part of every fictional play.  Thus, his likeness was one of the raw materials from which a new work was synthesized, rather than the sum and substance of the work in question.

11 Jun 03:31

Gandalf the Goat

Gandalf the Goat

Submitted by: Unknown (via Tumblr)

Tagged: goat , ian mckellen , gandalf
04 Jun 19:41

OK, Sold On One Condition…

by Brinke

Does it come with the new Kitteh Positioning Satellite system? (KPS.)

8806289850_60b5164042_o
From The Fluffington Post.


Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: kittehs
03 May 15:14

LMFAO Takes Ex-Manager to the California Labor Commissioner (Exclusive)

by Eriq Gardner
Adriennemeddock

unlicensed agent....


With possibly $7 million on the line, a trial begins on Monday where the successful electronic duo attempts to demonstrate that Rene McLean acted as an unlicensed agent.

read more

    
02 May 04:00

Surnames as trade marks: an Indian perspective

by Kundu, A.

One's name has been regarded as one's most characteristic possession, which differentiates a person from all other persons and enables him to be known. People are differentiated on the basis of their surnames and goods are identified by their distinctive trade marks. Trade marks which, by association, connote quality are an asset, but trade marks are also a liability because the owner stakes his reputation for better or for worse on his goods.

The right to use one's own name as a trade name, trade mark or service is not absolute. There has been litigation for trade mark infringement resulting from the use of personal name or surname trade marks as the trade mark significance of a surname may come to dominate the surname significance over time through long and exclusive use by the trade mark owner. The basic problem with registering surnames is that they are generally objectionable, per se, on the ground that they are not distinctive and in order to be distinctive it is clear that a mark must be different from other marks used upon or in connection with the same or similar goods.

In this article, I will not only describe the Indian position on the use of surnames as trade marks but also briefly describe the position in United States and Europe.

29 Apr 22:48

Nosal Convicted of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Crime Despite His Ninth Circuit Win – US v. Nosal

by Venkat
Adriennemeddock

This is the case I wrote up for 2011 IP Annual

[Post by Venkat Balasubramani, with a comment from Eric]

US v. Nosal, CR 08-0237 EMC (N.D. Cal. Mar. 12, 2013) (.pdf, denying motion to dismiss)

US v. Nosal, a case that spawned two Ninth Circuit opinions and that’s sure to involve more, just concluded at the trial court level with Nosal being convicted on charges of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. (See coverage from David Kravets here (“Hacking Trial Devoid of Hacking Awaits Jury Verdict”) and Vanessa Blum here (“Nosal Found Guilty in Trade Secret Case”.)

Judge Patel originally dismissed several of the counts that alleged the misuse of information that were accessed by individuals who were authorized to access the information. Although the 9th Circuit initially disagreed, an en banc panel agreed with this approach, ruling that criminality should not turn on the person’s intent in accessing information or employer policies. The key question is whether the defendant is authorized to access the information in question at all. Since the dismissed counts alleged people accessed information they were otherwise authorized to access but misused this information, these counts were out.

But this left some remaining counts, which involved access via password sharing. Nosal argued that the 9th Circuit’s en banc opinion in Nosal precluded these claims as well because they did not involve any “hacking” in the traditional sense, but the district court (now Judge Chen) disagreed. In a March 12th order, he said that the 9th Circuit’s discussion of the CFAA as anti-hacking was only relevant to discuss the general purposes behind the CFAA and not something by which the court intended to limit the statute. In any event, he noted that a password is a basic technological barrier to access and using someone else’s password is as much a violation of the CFAA as is breaking the password. Nosal also argued by analogy to off-line trespass, saying that accessing an office with someone else’s key is not trespass, but the court doesn’t buy this argument.

The court also addressed the parties’ argument over whether “access” for purposes of the CFAA is the act of initially logging on, or encompasses ongoing use. Defendant argued that access just involves logging on, and if someone logged on with their own password, then the access is not unauthorized. The court rejects this interpretation, saying that the scenario as alleged by the government is that someone logged on using their credentials, then handed over the computer to the person who was unauthorized who then conducted searches on the database. The court says this is functionally no different from just handing the password over and letting the other person access the database. (The court notes that it need not address the issue of whether looking over someone’s shoulder and “accessing” information falls under the statute.)

[As a sidenote, a federal district court in New York recently joined the 9th Circuit in rejecting the broader interpretation of the CFAA. Interestingly, this case also involved a recruiting business.]

__

It's interesting that with all the hand-wringing generated by the 9th Circuit's opinion, Nosal was convicted anyway! Eric has made this point previously, but it seems like there are always avenues open to employers to go after people who start competing businesses. Here, there was even a more narrower CFAA claim that was available after several of the claims were nuked by the 9th Circuit. Even with these claims gone, there are still plenty of claims, at least on the civil side.

Judge Chen's order, which is sure to be revisited in post-trial motions and in an appeal, grapples with the interesting issue of whether access by proxy violates the statute. Nosal's argument--that the initial access which is effected by a person is authorized and this is all that matters--is an interesting one, but one that is unlikely to get much traction in the 9th Circuit. Still, it has some appeal, since the line between logging on and letting someone access and logging on accessing the information and providing it to someone is legally thin. (It's also worth noting that this case should serve as a warning to those who share passwords.)
_______

Eric's Comment. This case baffles me. Did Nosal do something wrong? Yes, undoubtedly. Did he do something criminal? I'm not sure. Did he violate the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act? No, and it's not even close. At most, Nosal encouraged or induced a CFAA violation, but as I understand the facts, he didn't commit the CFAA violation directly. As Venkat notes--and as I outlined in my Forbes article on the CFAA--a variety of legal doctrines would have made Nosal pay for his choices. Contorting the CFAA to apply to him was unnecessary, and it's disquieting for the rest of us.
_______

Related posts:

Ex-Employee's Access/Misuse of Employer Files States CFAA Claim -- Weingand v. Harland Financial
Comments on the Ninth Circuit's En Banc Ruling in U.S. v. Nosal
Facebook Gets Decisive Win Against Pseudo-Competitor Power Ventures
Court Finds That the Value of Bartered-For Services Constitutes Loss Under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -- Animators at Law v. Capital Legal Solutions
No Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Violation for Access of Facebook and Personal Email by Employee -- Lee v. PMSI
9th Cir: Access of Computer in Violation of Employer's Use Policy Violates Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -- US v. Nosal (original panel opinion, vacated on rehearing)
Lori Drew Guilty of 3 Misdemeanor Violations of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act

27 Apr 22:58

Appropriation Artist Richard Prince Prevails Against Photographer at Appeals Court

by Eriq Gardner

In an important copyright ruling, the Second Circuit rules that most of the artist's use of Patrick Cariou's photographs was transformative.

read more

    
27 Apr 22:54

Lawsuit Claims Paramount Stole 'Paranormal Activity 4' Ideas from Pitch Meeting

by Alex Ben Block
Adriennemeddock

Ent Law


Filmmaker Michael Costanza claims the studio and two producers used concepts he submitted in 2010 for the hit 2012 horror movie

read more

    
27 Apr 02:27

April 2013

by Ian

Cloud of the Month for April 2013

A Fiery Brazilian Beauty

The Cloud of the Month for April was photographed over Brazil by Pilot Ron Engels from the flight deck, en route from Amsterdam to Lima. It shows a majestic vista of castle-like towering Cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds extending for miles ahead. A pilot must plot his route carefully to find a safe passage through these cloudy battlements. You might think that, unlike real castle turrets, the ephemeral clouds wouldn’t present many problems for an airliner, but clouds like these have to be avoided at all costs. They contain violent up- and downdrafts of air that can flip a plane like a pancake. As the author G. K. Chesterton wrote, “There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds”.

Photograph © Ron Engels.

15 Apr 15:52

First Myriad reactions

by Tom Goldstein

Lyle will have a full argument analysis, and Amy will follow in Plain English, but I wanted to put something up with my initial reactions to the just-concluded oral argument.

It seems clear that the Court has grave doubts about holding that isolated DNA segments are themselves patentable. At the same time, it does not want to inhibit patents that truly add something new or identify a valuable use. So I expect a narrow ruling by a substantial majority that isolated DNA itself is patent ineligible. But the Court will hold or suggest that cDNA, as well as use or process patents involving isolated DNA, are patent eligible. The question in individual cases will be whether those further patents are invalid because they are obvious.

Here is Bloomberg’s first report, as well. 

In association with Bloomberg Law

12 Apr 17:24

5th Annual Trademark Scholars' Roundtable

by Rebecca Tushnet
Adriennemeddock

good notes on ulk tm history

Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Session 1: Conceptual Questions About Registration



Mark Janis: conversation about registration is not often academic, and that means there’s a lot of opportunity to investigate high-level conceptual issues (not just questions about the TMEP): systemic design choices, which eventually manifest at the level of the TMEP. Conversation in the US is rather pedestrian; we have a lot to learn from other systems.


Graeme Dinwoodie: not a burning issue like TM use, but underexplored. Outside the US registration a significant part of practice, and of international policy discussion.  Why does registration dominate that discussion/debate at the international level?  Seen as principal defining characteristic of national regimes: use-based or registration-based.  Doesn’t even teach registration in the US until halfway through, but in the UK/Europe that’s where he starts.


But has found the differences overstated.  Intent to use in the US: constructive use, complete modification.  In EU, most countries have grounds for opposition that take into account use-based rights.  But we may also understate the system’s effect on other features of the system—in some ways a proxy for a passing off claim (for unregistered marks)—should we have a narrow set of rights from registration that are more property-oriented, and then §43(a) for passing off?  Registration line might be a line between two different types of claims, on the one hand representing slam-dunk uncontestable property rights and others at the margins.  EU: one of the challenges of EU for Court of Justice has been to accommodate historically use-based and varying degrees of registration-based systems. Playing with reality v. paper rights to compromise reflecting different systems.


Mark McKenna: also teaches that registration is not fundamentally the point of the system.  Why is that so?  Three overlapping ambivalences in US law.  (1) The extent to which we want the TM system to be federal as opposed to state law.  (2) The extent to which we want it to be statutory rather than common law.  (3) The extent to which we can sensibly think about TM law as distinct from unfair competition.


1870: first registration system; struck down. 1881: new system available only to marks used in foreign trade/trade with Indian tribes.  The registration system has always been a carrot rather than a stick. Initially the carrot was a federal cause of action, available only for registered marks. That carrot has been chewed up now.  However, one thing that did was distinguish TM from unfair competition (the cause of action available under state law for unregistered marks).  Prior to Erie, that didn’t matter a lot as a matter of substance—registration gives you a federal cause of action, but you can just vindicate your existing claims—the right is “procedural.”  Post-Erie, the courts were confused about what that meant; the substance must be coming from state law.


Registration wasn’t widely used when commerce was more limited; the benefit of rights beyond a specific location of use wasn’t tremendously important to most people. By the time of the Lanham Act, some desire for more rights, but the design choice was still to provide a carrot.  Subject matter: in 1905 and even 1946—had in mind a much narrower set of things, technical TMs, not trade dress/product configuration.  That was all left to unfair competition.


Post-Lanham Act, substantial broadening of §43(a) begins to sweep this into the federal level. Now a registration doesn’t mean much because you can get so much through §43(a). American law has lost the ability to conceive of unfair competition as distinct from §43(a), and that’s a loss.  Badly undertheorized, but one reason is that it’s a jack of all trades.  Though we may call §43(a) claims unfair competition, because they’re subject to all the same rules as registered TMs, we don’t really think about the differences.


Unfair competition law didn’t prevent copying of product configuration, but did require labeling. There might be gains from rethinking subject matter of TM law and non-subject matter.


Lionel Bently: UK history. What is now TM law was found in various places—statutory provisions built around particular trades.  E.g., from the 17th c. there was local legislation relating to marks used on cutlery, knives, etc. 1720s, act gave protection to marks woven into or printed on linens. 1813, act relating to counterfeiting marks on gun barrels. Etc.  Alongside that there were provisions of the emerging common law and equitable rules that eventually became to be seen as passing off.


Traders seek registration system. 1860s: bills introduced to allow registration/criminalize misdescriptions in trade. Outcome: no registration, but criminalizing misdescription in trade, not just labeling source but quantity/quality—consumer protection indirectly protecting traders.  Traders continued to lobby for registration system. 1875: registration enacted (after the US and British colonies). Colonial experience may have helped confidence in operation of registration.


Treaties premised on the notion of reciprocity.  Foreign countries wouldn’t recognize Britain’s scattered protection for purposes of reciprocity—or at least British traders believed this, though he’s never seen evidence that foreign countries declined to provide reciprocity on this basis.  Registration is therefore linked from the start to international protection. That may explain US’s disinterest; many US traders wouldn’t have cared at the time.  (McKenna: most worried about expanding markets in the US since there was so much room to grow there.)


Expensive for traders to establish rights each time; wanted easy recognition, and registration seemed a good way. Note that registration was being proposed for lots of things at the time—land, design, copyright for works of fine art. Thinking in terms of registration was not a strange move.


Problems: questions of definition. Personal names were most common marks, but what would it mean to register a surname? Excluding other people with the same surname? A disconnect between the feeling that a trader should be able to use their own name and a registration system that would include names.  Same too with indications that goods came from a particular place, also common.


Also seen as potential vehicle for fraud: registration could allow transferability of TMs, which would enable deception of consumers.


Another objection: would the system change the nature of what was protected?  If the registration system protected different things from what was being used, that would cause difficulties.  Louboutin case in the US shows problems with figuring out what the representation in the registration actually protects.


1875 Act: registration was only permitted in relation to narrow category of subject matter. Words/names not initially registrable apart from where they’d already been used/acquired a reputation—going forward, no registration of names/words, but rather symbols and devices. The act didn’t define the rights given to a registrant, until 1905—just operated as constructive use that could be the basis for a common law action.


Relationship with common law was unclear. 1875-77: commentaries assumed that you couldn’t rely on the common law if it was registrable but not registered. By 1905 dual system was accepted.


18,000 registrations by 1880.  In particular fields there were real problems, such as marks relating to cotton where a separate system was set up for determining validity: 40,000 applications, with only 10% registered.  Move from different trades to centralized regime, and wasn’t ready for that and had to go back to the trade!


McKenna: US may be free riding—no struggle with what may be registered. Early acts just say the owner of a TM can register it; no attempt to define what a TM is, though people seem to think they understand that. Only later does terminology of technical TMs develop.  Basically the idea is inherent distinctiveness, but no struggle to reach that conclusion. Never any question that state protection is also available for registrable marks.


Jessica Litman: in hearings as early as 1910, you do have TM lawyers fighting over trade names being included as TMs. But that’s post 1905.


Bob Bone: separate provision for descriptive marks after that.


McKenna: trying to map timeframe: up to the 1905 act, the terminology is starting to surface but not making its way into the statutory discussion.


Stacey Dogan: Is TM supposed to protect consumer meaning, or to protect producers and provide property-like system of metes and bounds?  Thinking conceptually about reasons for use-based v. registration-based regimes; costs and benefits. Blending is worst of all possible worlds.


If consumer protection is our goal, TMs should be defined by consumer recognition (including geography). Practical and error-cost reasons to provide rights that don’t perfectly correlate with consumer expectations: inherently distinctive marks can be protected before acquiring brand significance in consumers’ minds. But use based rights do resonate with the economic approach to TM protection and suggest a limited scope of protection. Registration offers priority or just affirms the existence of use-based rights.


Notice is a big benefit of registration, at least in theory, especially as producers expand into new markets and may have trouble determining what rights exist. Maybe it should be required for certain types of marks. But these advantages require the registry to be an accurate catalog of who has which legal rights. Today’s blended regime means that a registry search isn’t a full clearance.


Warehousing/gamesmanship. This problem can be avoided through proof of use before the registration vests and if the rights are limited strictly to the nature of the use that’s specified in the application. If we insist that parties only register marks that they have a good faith intent to use and the rights don’t vest until use, and then only to the uses made, problems are less costly.


Pragmatic reason for not having registration-only: not everyone has resources/sophistication to register. But does this protection have to be the same as that provided to registered marks? Perhaps only protect against passing off.


What if we required registration for trade dress? This is an area where notice is the most problematic for understanding what copying is ok.  Competition concerns are quite significant. Appeal to having some level of review, registration, and notice w/r/t those kinds of marks. Whatever we say about Louboutin, one interesting thing is that the court did limit the registration to the mark that was actually used. Could take the further step to say that when the marks are registered in that configuration, the scope ought to be more limited as well.


Litman: could argue that they limited it to the specimen of use, since the description didn’t require contrast.


Dogan: if notice is a benefit, could harness registration for areas where notice is a special problem.


Dinwoodie: essentially preempt a common law action with respect to that subject matter.


Dogan: right.


Dinwoodie: flip the Louboutin facts: where the mark said “contrast” but in fact the use went beyond contrast—would you preclude a case?


McKenna/Dogan: yes. 


McGeveran: require use to get the meaning that leads to the registration, but then protect only registered marks?


Dogan: yes: registration confirms source identifying meaning and formalizes it.


Bone: if we’re worried about consumer confusion, it seems somewhat arbitrary to limit protection except for the benefits of avoiding too broad protection. But can we rely on the PTO to strike an appropriate balance between avoiding anticompetitive effects and protecting against consumer confusion. Once the applicant understands the limits, the applicant will make very broad claims for protection.  Like an overbroad patent application; the examiner will have to narrow it—can we trust in that.


Dogan: fair point.


Janis: lessons from patent law: when you put a lot of pressure on the registration document, you get arguments to a court that the PTO didn’t strike the right balance, so you need a doctrine of equivalents or the like. There needs to be a mechanism to deal with scope later, and the erosion of notice therefrom.


Dogan: early version of the idea! Basic question is whether we can get some of the benefits of registration and make them real w/r/t certain types of marks.


Dinwoodie: existence of other systems do some of the work, design patent/copyright—this is what made the Court comfortable in Dastar, Wal-Mart, and Traffix.  If you make everything strong, then all rights will be strong; a weak safety valve might be better, including a weak cause of action for unfair competition.  Forcing into single strong property regime is difficult.


Dogan: would need more robust review; formalize Traffix and say you can register incidental/arbitrary (court unfortunately also says “ornamental”).


McKenna: registration systems are created at a moment when the scope of rights is very narrow—very similar mark for very similar goods/services. So we need to consider registration and scope—registration is more worrisome when what counts as infringement expands. We should think about scope.


The more done in registration, the more pressure on examination.  Except for silly incontestability, he doesn’t care if it’s registered; presumption of validity doesn’t mean as much in TM as in patent. (I think I disagree with this.)


Marshall Leaffer: we don’t want to overburden the registration system. Unfair competition notions folded into registration create questions of description. TM office doesn’t want to have to describe these things.


We do live in a fairly harmonized world.  So we need to understand how it will be integrated worldwide. If we throw too much in, our assumptions will be undermined.


Jeremy Sheff: On the importance of structuring examination process: compare patents. People believe that most patents aren’t valuable; the market will figure that out and courts will deal with it. The reason that doesn’t even arguably work for TM is incontestability. If the examination process fails us because of institutional pressures it may take longer to determine which are valuable; we don’t have a comparable way for reassessing validity on descriptiveness. 


Dogan: but functionality is usually the biggest problem for trade dress.


Sheff: but there are other issues.


Leaffer: maintenance fees? Increase them! Make people reveal valuations.


Dogan: just a thought experiment. Other general questions have been raised about the values of registration v. use based systems.


Sheff: if you killed incontestability, the problem would go away, but other problems of competition remain from the examination process. 


Dogan: they are getting registration/incontestability now when they want to.


Janis: without incontestability, we’d shift to debating presumption of validity, which would become more meaningful.


Litman: updating a casebook every year for 20 years, so she doesn’t see in topic terms but in year to year terms. When Two Pesos came out, she thought no one would bother to register trade dress. But unquestionably in 5-10 years is that litigated cases generating opinions involving registered trade dress swamp the number of unregistered trade dress cases.


(1) PTO has loosened up a lot on registering trade dress. (2) People looking for international protection down the line get nothing from use-based rights.  Sometimes broad trade dress claims have gotten through the PTO. So a registration requirement is worth thinking about.


McGeveran: notice. Trying to puzzle through how notice works in a meaningful way. Incentivizing fighting it out at the beginning, but only if you’re a sophisticated competitor. You may not be able to wait and see. Good for clarity, but bad for disputes generated without need?  Also, what about people who don’t know that they’ll have a problem (small, not yet existing competitors).  What is the effect of the registration? If you start to get too concerned about those people, then you immediately move to whittling away at the significance of the registration.


Beebe: similar to copyright, where the background assumption of early opinions was that only registration granted rights—so narrow subject matter underlay formation of rights that we now take for granted as applying to anything that is fixed.


Reference to priority: Main reason to register in US is nationwide priority—constructive notice/constructive use. 


Mike Grynberg: registration takes a fact intensive inquiry and resolves it at the administrative level. Familiar arguments about expertise/regulatory capture. Trying to get an information signal that people can rely on. We don’t trust the PTO, so we need either a limit on the kinds of rights registration gives or aggressive judicial oversight. That’s not inconsistent with thinking that the PTO’s information signal is worthwhile. You might need to clear the hurdle of the PTO as a necessary but not sufficient condition for protection.


Dogan: functionality is key here—how do we feel about oversight of PTO decisions.  Also secondary meaning, to some extent. Supreme Court has been good on functionality lately, and most lower courts are doing ok, except on aesthetic functionality.  This remains alive even after incontestability. Could adjust the presumptions and make this kind of system for trade dress be pure notice. Judges could take a more aggressive approach to reviewing the eligibility questions.


Dinwoodie: like a deposit system?


Dogan: like copyright, maybe.


McKenna: all of us coalesce around concerns over trade dress, not trademark. Would a mandatory registration system confined to traditional subject matter be a good idea? It’s not just functionality. One of the problems w/trade dress is just how amorphous and undefined the concept is. Look at what people claim—“everything about us” is our trade dress.  The PTO would have to be able to decide something about claim scope. Whether you’re claiming too broadly or not. They don’t do that—they think only relationally compared to existing marks. But that’s not enough; the fact that other Mexican restaurants have festive atmospheres (Two Pesos) doesn’t come into the analysis.  (Of course Two Pesos was unregistered!)

11 Apr 02:49

Ponce de Leon Hotel: 1897

by Dave
St. Augustine, Florida, circa 1897. "Ponce de Leon Hotel -- Front view and entrance." Railroad magnate Henry Flagler's coquina confection is known today as Flagler College. 5x8 glass negative by William Henry Jackson. View full size.
09 Apr 03:18

Trophy Son Half Father's Age

Trophy Son Half Father's Age
23 Mar 04:36

OMGPONIES!!!!1!1! (We Call This Look “The Farrah”)

by Brinke
Adriennemeddock

I am not sure what happens when I hit share in the old reader.

Positively Angelic, no?

8466614134_2de325ebb8_o
The Firdinator sent this one in.


Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Horses, OMGponies
23 Mar 03:53

Congressman Faleomavaega Introduces Bill To Cancel REDSKINS Registrations

by John L. Welch
On March 20th, U.S. Congressman Eni F.H. Faleomavaega of the Territory of American Samoa introduced H.R. 1278, entitled the "Non-Disparagement of Native American Persons or Peoples in Trademark Registration Act of 2013. [Press Release here]. H.R. 1278 would cancel existing trademark registrations for trademarks using the term "redskin." It would also deny registration for new trademarks using the term "redskin."


According to a briefing paper distributed to legislators, there are currently six trademark registrations and five pending trademark applications that would be affected by the bill. [Read more here]

Read comments and post your comment here.
23 Mar 01:20

I'll Remove More Than an Ear

17 Mar 16:03

paranormal cativity



















paranormal cativity