Thomas Kjellberg

November 14, 2024 | New York Law Journal

This article discusses two hit songs, one written by Ed Sheeran, and the other by Led Zeppelin, and their court battle to determine if a line/bass in Sheeran's song had copied one in Ld Zeppelin's.

By Robert W. Clarida and Thomas Kjellberg

7 minute read

October 10, 2024 | New York Law Journal

This column explores the legal standing of a songwriter who objects to the use of his music in a political campaign.

By Thomas Kjellberg and Robert Clarida

10 minute read

October 01, 2024 | New York Law Journal

"The courts have also recognized that 'human creativity is the sine qua non at the core of copyrightability, even as that human creativity is channeled through new tools or into new media,'" write Robert W. Clarida and Thomas Kjellberg.

By Robert W. Clarida and Thomas Kjellberg

7 minute read

July 18, 2024 | New York Law Journal

Until the court squarely holds otherwise, plaintiffs seeking the benefit of the discovery rule will bear the burden of showing that no reasonable copyright owner, similarly situated, should have discovered the infringement before plaintiff did in fact discover it.

By Robert W. Clarida and Thomas Kjellberg

7 minute read

May 16, 2024 | New York Law Journal

The Supreme Court recently resolved a question regarding copyright actions that has generated conflicting results in the Courts of Appeal for years, but as a forceful dissent pointed out, it left open a more fundamental issue that could render the entire question moot.

By Robert W. Clarida and Thomas Kjellberg

10 minute read

March 14, 2024 | New York Law Journal

In 'Philpot v. Independent Journal Review', the Fourth Circuit reversed the district court's findings regarding fair use and copyright registration validity.

By Thomas Kjellberg and Robert W. Clarida

11 minute read

January 19, 2024 | New York Law Journal

To ring out the old year on an otherworldly note, the Western District of Pennsylvania issued a preliminary injunction in a case involving the unauthorized copying of an inflatable adult Halloween costume that created the "whimsical" illusion that the wearer was being carried around by a seven-foot-tall green space alien.

By Robert W. Clarida and Thomas Kjellberg

6 minute read

December 05, 2023 | New York Law Journal

In 1993, Kerson and the Vermont Law School entered into an agreement for Kerson to paint two murals on the walls of the upper level of the Chase Community Center. During the summer of 2020, the law school's president received a petition demanding the removal of the murals. Kerson sued the law school, seeking a preliminary injunction enjoining it from placing panels over the murals, invoking his rights under VARA.

By Thomas Kjellberg and Robert W. Clarida

10 minute read

September 14, 2023 | New York Law Journal

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia recently upheld a final refusal by the U.S. Copyright Office to register a visual work that was not the product of human authorship but was instead created by a computer algorithm. The sole legal issue of the case, Thaler v. Perlmutter, was whether a work autonomously generated by an AI system is copyrightable.

By Robert W. Clarida and Thomas Kjellberg

7 minute read

July 24, 2023 | New York Law Journal

A discussion of 'Finch v. Casey' concerning 99 songs co-written by Richard Finch and Harry Wayne Casey—aka KC—while they were members of KC & The Sunshine Band in the 1970s. The case is "one of only a handful of cases touching on the interplay between the Copyright Act's statute of limitations, and its termination-of-transfer provisions."

By Thomas Kjellberg and Robert W. Clarida

9 minute read