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Jones Day Lawyers Apparently Don’t Know the Law

Started by TLF · 9 months ago

[The following post discusses a matter of public interest and people who have brought public attention upon themselves. It contains only expressions of opinion and recitations of facts that I believe in good faith to be true. It should be clear, and I urge you to be clear, that the only serv ... Continue reading »

8 comments

  • Meredith Wilkes deserves more respect than you have shown her...on the racquetball court that is.

    Maybe she is doing one of those "How To Lose All My Clients In 10 Days" magazine pieces.
  • The trademark and linking claims are bogus, but I think posting the images actually is copyright infringement. If it weren't, any publication could put copyrighted images next to any related text, which is probably not the case. Do you think differently?
    IANAL.
  • The Jones Day suit didn't allege any copyright violations - perhaps because the owner of the copyrights in the images they have on their Web sites is the photographer who took them. And news reporting is listed in the Copyright Act as purpose of using copyrighted material that is fair use. Perhaps Jones Day lawyers DO understand copyright law! [n.b., Criticism and comment are also listed fair uses of copyrighted material.]
  • Sadly, that is a wonderfully written post.

    Some day I'd love to have my country back.
  • I haven't seen the actual lawsuit so I'll take your word for it. The letters speak vaguely of "proprietary material" which I assumed includes the photographs.
    It's possible that the copyright in the images belongs to the photographer but it's much more likely they were works for hire and belong to the firm.
    As for fair use, the purpose of the reproduction is just one of four criteria for fair use; another one is how extensive the reproduction is, in this case the whole work. I find it hard to believe that this is acceptable fair use of a copyrighted photograph; as I said before, that would mean that any publication - a newspaper, a website, a blog - that "reports" on anything can use any copyrighted picture that relates to the text. That sounds implausible to me. Again, IANAL.
    If the firm does hold the copyright to the photographs they should be scorned, not commended, for failing to use the one claim where they had a chance.
  • Documents from the case are on the Citizen Media Law page.
  • Jones Day has no case. This seems to be a clear-cut case of descriptive fair-use.
  • I haven't seen the actual lawsuit so I'll take your word for it. The letters speak vaguely of "proprietary material" which I assumed includes the photographs.
    It's possible that the copyright in the images belongs to the photographer but it's much more likely they were works for hire and belong to the firm

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