Design Patent Infringement
Ok blog people (no one is reading this!). Now, that I got your attention I would love to express some important cases that took place in IP (intellectual property). The first case is Gorm?... (Something that rhymes with orm) vs. White. Was all started over silverware designs as this Corbin guy was a designer and had his design ripped off by White who had a similar gothic design. The whole argument is about who should determine the fact of infringement. Should it be someone off the street, or someone in the industry? The case went to the supreme court where the supreme court ruled that it would have to be someone off the street that has no knowledge of the subject, so now the Gorm test is the standard in determining infringement.
Copyright Recapture
As the copyright act of 1976 was restructured there was a 35 year window to recapture your rights starting from the year 1978. You have to get a warning letter at least two to ten years to the owner of the copyright and work for hire doesn't apply to this concept. After you write the letter, you file with the US copyright office. You have a five year window after that to get your copyright back. This just goes to show that how the US copyright office is more towards the arts/artist. This concept was a get out of jail card if you got a bad deal back in the day and filing is already past, so this get out of jail card isn't helping me any time soon.
The Visual Arts Act
Alright the Visual Arts Act is more based on moral rights for the artist and not having your work manipulated without your consent type of deal. It was formed during 1990 and the Bern Convention (Europe's copyright law system) already had these moral rights in place and the United States didn't want to be left behind decided to get on the moral rights issue. So moral rights of work weren't really protected, except in a few states in the past. Now the Visual Arts Act helps protect the moral rights of your work. Section 106A of the Copyright Act.
