This blog required me to analyzed three different liabilities associated with my business plan for my company. The three different recent controversies that impacted my industry that I have identified are: YouTube Beats Viacom In Massive Copyright Infringement Case, Kanye West Wins In Copyright Infringement Case and Waffle House Claims Trademark Infringement Against Rapper J.R. Bricks’ “Waffle House Song.
YouTube Beats Viacom In Massive Copyright Infringement Case
In this particular case, “YouTube has been handed the victory that they wanted, and has found legal protection and has set precedent that they, and others like them, are protected under the safe harbor section of the DMCA”. The DMCA means Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The U.S. Congress passed the DMCA on October 12, 1998. This act protects your intellectual properties and original content such as your pictures, videos, images and software on the web.
The YouTube v. Viacom lawsuit is over three years old. However, Viacom claimed that Google and YouTube had knowledge of them posting their material on YouTube website. They also stated that Google and YouTube participated in those acts. They also claimed that Google and YouTube owe them a lot of money.
From reviewing and analyzing this case, it appeared to me that everyone that they are pointing the finger at each other. It seems like all were involved in either copyright infringement or self-copyright infringement. However, it is stated this debate is endless. Nevertheless, it will cool down because Viacom wants to YouTube as way to promote and basically, just trying to clean out dry for infringement.
In conclusion, I think that Viacom should have at least gotten some legal documents, such an agreement or contract from Google and YouTube to prevent them from copyright infringement.
Kanye West Wins In Copyright Infringement Case
The case against Kanye West was filed last year, in 2010 for copyright infringement by Vince P. Nevertheless, his real name is Vincent Peters. Mr. peters had filed a lawsuit against Kanye West because he claimed that Mr. West had taken the song “Stronger” from him and made it his own song. He stated that he had given a copy of his song to John Monopoly in 2006. Mr. Monopoly is one of Kanye West’s colleagues. He filed a lawsuit because he believed that Mr. Monopoly had given the copy of his song to Kanye West that was released in 2007 on the Graduation album.
However, the lawsuit stated that there were very important parts of the track and lyrics that were kind of similar. However, the case was thrown out by Judge Virginia Kendall because she came to the conclusion and believed that Mr. Peters’ and West’s song were not identical enough to have a case.
How do you determine who win a case or suit such as this one? Especially, if “the suit stated that West's track “copies significant and important parts of Peters’ lyrics identically or almost identically." It appeared to me that this case could have gone either way because I don’t believed that two different people who barely knows each other can come up with tracks and lyrics that were identically or almost identically to each other because tracks and lyrics had to be written by one of them first.
Given the statement by Mr. Peters that he had given a copy of the song to one of kanye’s associate in 2006, gave many reasons to believed that Mr. Peters had been taken advantage and most like had a case against Mr. West. However, due to the lack of evidence, Mr. West had one the case. Maybe Mr. Monopoly rewrote the lyrics and reproduced tracks were given to Mr. West to use.
Waffle House Claims Trademark Infringement Against Rapper J.R. Bricks’ Waffle House’ Song
The third and final case is on trademark infringement. This case is against an Atlanta-based rapper called J.R. Bricks. Mr. Bricks’ real name is Earl Harrison, Jr. and he is from Havana, Florida. Also Mr. Bricks is a United States Air Force veteran. Not to long ago, he signed a deal with German-American digital imprint with Block Starz Music LLC.
Nevertheless, J.R. Bricks had received a cease and desist letter from the restaurant franchise weeks after releasing his debut song called “Waffle House” over trademark infringement. The song was released on iTunes on July 2011.
“Waffle House ordered the artist to stop using the logo on iTunes, and to change the title of the song, which is now called "After The Club." The restaurant rejected Block Starz executives' offer to change the song to "WaffelHaus (After the Club)."
However, Mr. Bricks was not pleased and claimed that the restaurant franchise does not want to be pat of the Hip-Hop industry, but the song mentioned marijuana uses. The franchise stated that decision is not because of the Hip-Hop lifestyle, but only because of the use of its name “Waffle House” and logo on iTunes.
Mr. Bricks also claimed that he doesn’t promote violence and profanity in his song, but just having a good time. Waffle House stated that they received several offers from individuals wanting to mention or use of the franchise names, such as TV shows, music and etc.
Furthermore, Waffle House said that they look at these situations on a case-to-case basis. Mr. Bricks was not the first artist to use the franchise name in his song. R. Kelly also had used the franchise name that featured Usher in the song that was named “Same Girl”.
In conclusion, I can understand where Waffle House is coming from because they needed to protect the brand name and content. However, this will prevent other artist from using the brand name and other artist from trademark infringement. I believed had J.R. Bricks should have gotten permission from Waffle House to use the franchise name. At least, if the franchise did not agree then they would have informed him or let him that he could not use the brand name.
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