Chair of Olshan’s Intellectual Property Law Group and Co-Chair of the firm’s Brand Management & Protection Group Mary Grieco and litigation counsel Katherine Mateo published an IPWatchdog article entitled “The Rise of IP Lawsuits When Posting Images: How to Navigate and Avoid Copyright Infringement Issues.” In the article, Mary and Kat discuss how the unlicensed use of another person’s photograph, even if that photograph is of yourself, comes with potentially robust legal ramifications.
Happy holidays! We hope you are safe and healthy. As we enter the new year, Olshan’s Advertising and Branding law groups shares their list of hot topics that look to be on the horizon for 2022. If you have any questions on these or other issues, please reach out to us.
Ariana Grande has filed a lawsuit against Forever 21 and its related beauty brand, Riley Rose (founded by the daughters of Forever 21 founder, Do Wan Chang), alleging that the fast fashion and beauty brands capitalized on the success of Ms. Grande’s Thank U, Next album by posting images of Ms. Grande on the brands’ social media accounts as well as images of a model bearing a striking resemblance to Ms. Grande.
Kawhi Leonard, an NBA player who plays for the Toronto Raptors, sued Nike on June 3, 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, Case 3:19-cv-01035-BAS-BGS, seeking declaratory relief of non-infringement and a declaration that he created and owns the KL2 logo: 
, that Nike did not author the logo and has no rights to the logo, that Nike is not entitled to copyright registration of the logo and that Nike defrauded the Copyright Office by intentionally misrepresenting the author of the logo.
Andrew Lustigman and Morgan Spina published an article in Leading Internet Case Law entitled “Court Rules Embedded Photos on Websites May Constitute Infringement.”
Any designation made in the paper-based registration system will expire after December 31, 2017
By William MacDonald*
The Center for Copyright Information will soon implement a subscriber monitoring and alert system in which copyright owners and ISPs will monitor Internet traffic in an attempt to help identify potentially infringing peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted material.