New York New York Legal Blog

School mascots are meant to inspire and rally students to strive for success. Those mascots are often symbols of desirable traits, such as strength, perseverance or indomitability. Sometimes, however, a New York school chooses its mascot or logo because it is familiar to students. For one school in another state, a familiar mascot was also a violation of intellectual property rights.

The communications manager of the middle school informed the media that the school recently made the choice to change its mascot and logo from Sylvester, the Looney Tunes cartoon cat, to a more generic and ferocious-looking feline. The school had not yet received a cease and desist letter for its use of the copyrighted image. However, school officials have had increasing difficulty getting copy centers to violate copyright law by reproducing documents and flyers that carried the Sylvester the Cat logo.

As society advances and people find new ways of expressing themselves, laws protecting their rights must change as well. However, it is well-known that changes in laws do not always happen quickly. One example of this is copyright law, which struggles to keep up with creativity expressed through technology. Users of social media in New York and across the country may wonder how much of what they post is protected from copyright infringement.

So far, no law exists to allow a user of the social media platform Twitter to register a tweet for copyright protection. In fact, copyright law states that short phrases like slogans cannot receive such protection from the U.S. Copyright Office. Tweets, originally 140 characters, are now as long as 280 characters. However, it is not always the length of the text that qualifies or disqualifies a piece of writing for protection.

The recent passing of Aretha Franklin was sad news to fans in New York and across the world. While her first hit song "Respect" became an anthem of empowerment for women and all those seeking fair treatment, it ironically represents the inequity many pre-1972 performers experienced under intellectual property laws. While songwriters and publishers received royalties for songs each time a radio station played them, the recording artists got nothing.

Penned and recorded originally by Otis Redding, "Respect" was about a man asking his wife to show him proper esteem even if she can't be faithful. Franklin's version of the song not only added her unique vocal flare but it also altered the meaning to reflect a woman demanding respect from her husband in exchange for her faithfulness. However, even this originality did not earn Franklin royalties since the laws governing copyright did not include music recorded prior to the signing of the law in 1972.

New York parents often enjoy watching movies at home with their children, but it can be upsetting when an inappropriate scene pops up on the screen. Parents may scramble for the remote to mute the language or fast forward past the violence or sexual content, but they are rarely fast enough to avoid the offensive material. Many families were glad to discover services that would remove the language, violence and disturbing images from the most popular films, but now, the filtering company is involved in intellectual property litigation.

VidAngel, Inc., reviews and sanitizes popular movies and TV shows before streaming them to subscribers for a fee. While parents may love the service, numerous major film companies, including Disney and Twentieth Century Fox, have taken issue with the editing VidAngel does. They say copyright law permits them to refuse to allow anyone to alter their work and re-present it to the public for profit without permission.