copyrights

Community property comes in all forms. including copyright royalty income For family law attorneys tasked with insuring a fair divide copyright royalty income in dissolution proceedings, the task can be a real challenge to divide the assets and make certain their clients get honestly paid.

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The Kingsmen were famous in the early 60’s for their famous music recording of the song “Louie Louie”. The master record of Louie Louie by the Kingsmen sold 20 million copies between 1963 and 1995. Unfortunately, during all those years, the Kingsmen never got paid, not even a dime, that is until copyright attorney Cheryl decided to help. Music entertainment lawyer Cheryl Hodgson is an expert music copyright lawyer. For years the band had had asked the question, “How do music royalties work?” They had been trying to find a music lawyer that would take their case and recover their music royalties.

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How to Copyright a Name

January 16, 2014

Clients new to the process of trademark registration sometimes ask first “how to copyright a name?” People confuse the terms trademark and copyrights, since patents trademark and copyrights were long ago lumped together by tradition. They are in fact separate and completely different areas of law and expertise. The correct question to ask is “how to trademark a name?” There is no such thing as copyright protection for a name. Instead, a copyright protects the artistic expression of an idea, such as a song, book, photograph, or art. The name of a product or service is covered by a US trademark, so “trademarking a name” is the more appropriate phrase. A trademark serves to identify and distinguish one merchant’s product or service from another.

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By Cheryl L. Hodgson

The U.S. Copyright Office has issued a Statement of Policy for Registration of Compilations restricting the definition of a compilation in the U.S. Copyright Law.  Read more about the policy here.

The Copyright Act defines a “compilation” as a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. One of the more controversial compilation copyrights involves a compilation copyright for a series of 26 yoga poses registered by Bikram Yoga. 

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