The King of Pop in contract breach?

The King of Pop looks like he's in a spot of bother.

IP Freely was one of many doubters of Michael Jackson's 50 date run of shows at the O2 (albeit my doubts were of a physical health nature rather than a legal one). Music Week has now reported that the shows are the subject of a legal wrangle.

All Good Entertainment Inc claims to have signed a deal with the King of Pop's manager Frank DeLeo stating that Michael would not play a show before July 2010 when he is contracted to perform with his sister Janet (and his brothers but I don't know who they are) in Texas.

As you will not have missed Michael's run of shows at the O2 start this July (that's '09 for those of you not paying attention), All Good are claiming a breach of contract and having apparently attempted to negotiate with Michael they are reportedly considering a claim.

IP Freely would be interested to read Michael's management agreement as Frank DeLeo should as a general rule not have the right to sign such a deal onn Michael's behalf........

Facebook change AGAIN

Facebook, it seems to be all IP Freely writes about these days. But having logged onto his account this morning he noticed a rather interesting new application allowing him (and other users of course) to vote for the sites "governance" documents (EULA and privacy policy to you and me).

IP Freely has previously identified a number of widely known issues with Facebook's EULA and controversy surrounding their proposal to change it. Anyway here's the clauses of the proposed EULA that interests IP Freely:

2. Sharing Your Content and Information

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings. In order for us to use certain types of content and provide you with Facebook, you agree to the following:

2.1 For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it).
2.2 When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
2.3 We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about Facebook, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them).

5. Protecting Other People’s Rights

We respect other people’s rights, and expect you to do the same.

5.1 You will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes someone else’s rights or otherwise violates the law.
5.2 We can remove any content you post on Facebook if we believe that it violates this Statement.
5.3 We will provide you with tools to help you protect your intellectual property rights. To learn more, visit our How to Report Claims of Intellectual Property Infringement page.
5.4 If we removed your content for infringing someone else’s copyright, and you believe we removed it by mistake, we will provide you with an opportunity to appeal.
5.5 If you repeatedly infringe other people’s intellectual property rights, we will disable your account when appropriate.
5.6 You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665) without our written permission.
5.7 If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it.
5.8 You will not post anyone’s identification documents or sensitive financial information on Facebook.

IP Freely particularly likes their "Amendments" clause:

12. Amendments

12.1 We can change this Statement so long as we provide you notice through Facebook (unless you opt-out of such notice) and an opportunity to comment.
12.2 For changes to sections 7, 8, 9, and 11 (sections relating to payments, application developers, website operators, and advertisers), we will give you a minimum of three days notice. For all other changes we will give you a minimum of seven days notice.
12.3 If more than 7,000 users comment on the proposed change, we will also give you the opportunity to participate in a vote in which you will be provided alternatives. The vote shall be binding on us if more than 30% of all active registered users as of the date of the notice vote.
12.4 We can make changes for legal or administrative reasons upon notice without opportunity to comment.

A roundup of recent trademark decisions

IP Freely is a little bit annoyed about this, he was just planning to do a round up of the numerous interesting trademark decisions doing the rounds, and what happens?????

The Law Gazette beats him to it: http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/in-practice/a-roundup-several-recent-trademark-decisions

WIPO Court?

Having watched the G20 "protests" with much interest (i.e. do these people really think a few thousand of them 'kicking up a fuss' is gonna make the slightest bit of difference to government policy then they're more retarded than they look) IP Freely noticed a piece on the IPKat to the effect that the G20 conference has reccomended a World IP Court.

The idea is that the World Intellectual Property Litigation Court is to be in action by 2012, WIPO say:

"The World Intellectual Property Organization welcomes this adoption of this proposal as a recognition of the need to balance the requirements of least developed litigation nations (the "LDL" group) with the fair treatment of intellectual property owners and creators, having regard to the organization's development programme and the need to preserve the organisation's prerogatives from unwarranted encroachments by the World Trade Organization".

The IPKat goes on to discuss quite where the court will be located, IP Freely recommends the UK so it is easy for him.

Street View

Today IP Freely has mostly been enjoying the delights of Street View, it's simply fantastic.

Currently the favourite photo has to be this beauty....ouch

As for the whole privacy issues (this is a blawg I guess so I should probably write something relevant) WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH. The fact is I could go down the road taking photos and there's buggar all anyone can do about it, on top of which if you don't like it then fill the form in and get Google to take it down. EASY

Virtual bank?

Regular readers will be aware of IP Freely's interest in the phenomenon that is virtual worlds. I was therefore extremely interested to read a piece on the BBC site regarding 'Entropia Universe'. It would appear that they have been granted a 'bank' licence by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, this allows them to "be in a position to offer real bank services to the inhabitants of our virtual universe,".

It will allow Mindark (the people behind Entropia) to offer interest bearing accounts, deposit salaries, pay bills and give loans. For those of you worried about Iceland esque crashes you will be pleased to hear each account is protected by deposit insurance up to £42,000.

Personally IP Freely will be sticking to a traditional account for the time being, but could this be the future?

Full article available here.

Round up!

Well I haven't written anything new for a while and in this time an incredible number of interesting cases / issues have arisen. This post aims to give an overview to, or more likely just link you to other people who have more interesting things to say!

First on the list (a very out-law based list) is the news from WIPO that the number of domain name disputes in the past year have increased by 8%, according to WIPO's director: "Cybersquatting remains a serious issue for trademark holders," shocking news? I think not. It seems likely that with the introduction of new TLD's will only create more problems. I have written about the introduction of these before and without going over the issues again what I will say is that it is simply a money making scheme which will create more expense for businesses in a time when they are trying to cut back.

The next point (and my second favourite of this round up) also comes from out-law and shows quite how far social networking site Twitter has come. A juror in the States (all fools anyway?) made tweets (see IP Freely knows the lingo) regarding the case. The verdict they reached is now being appealed on the basis that the juror was biased, examples of his tweets are as follows:

"Nobody buy Stoam. Its bad mojo and they'll probably cease to Exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter,"
"I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else's money"

and best of all is the following, bear in mind that at this stage he had already been found out for his Twittering, so what did he do?........:

"Well, I'm off to see a judge. Hope they don't lock me under the jail, and forget about me for four days,"

Idiot!

Finally from out-law is a tremendous story about yet another idiot. This time someone infringed their own patent! Basically the guy involved went on BBC2 hit show Dragons Den, unlike most contestants (if they're called that) he managed to convince the dragons to invest £150,000 into his business: the Rapstrap. Unfortunately for all involved this muppet had already got a patent for the product 10 years previous when he worked for a different firm, the IPO have confirmed that the Rapstrap "falls within the scope of claims 1 and 5 of the patent," what action is taken remains to be seen.

The ever reliable IPKat features two cases that caught IP Freely's eye: the Google France v. Louis Vuitton Malletier case (C- 236/08) and the Beta Layout case (although for the latter we are awaiting a full translation), I suggest you head over to the feline page to peruse their views.

Also on IP Freely's recent radar is the case of Times Newspapers Limited (Nos 1 and 2) v United Kingdom (Applications Nos 3002/03 and 23676/03), tactfully reported in the Times Law Reports (here) this not surprisingly featured the Times Newspaper.

This week IP Freely has also been fascinated with the ongoing West Ham / Tevez / Sheffield United saga (and you can possibly add to that list Neil Warnock / the players / Ledds United) which seems to become more farcical by the day. Now as I see it surely the damage suffered by Leeds United (and Neil Warnock etc) is too remote? I would though like the views of those more experienced than me on this......anyone?