When I lived in San Francisco I passed the same homeless man pretty much every morning on my way to work.  He was always strategically situated across from the main bus depot in front of a coffee shop.  When Google’s Street View was launch last year – a feature of Google Maps providing street-level photographic views – I visited that street corner (virtually) to see if he was captured when Google’s panoramic cameras photographed the area.  He wasn’t but lots of other people were, and with their faces in full view.  At the time, I thought this was a lawsuit waiting to happen.  Even if these people were in a public place and photographed from public streets – arguably waiving any right of privacy – there were bound to be plenty of eager lawyers interested in suing the behemoth Internet giant and testing the legal waters on this issue.

Of course lawsuits were filed on this issue but, more interestingly, privacy advocates also raised legitimate concerns over public activities that perhaps shouldn’t be on permanent, worldwide display; such as views of men leaving strip clubs, sunbathers in bikinis, parents hitting their children, or johns picking up prostitutes.  In response, Google began blurring people’s faces and allowing users to tag offensive views for removal.  This is the right result.  Even if Google has no legal liability for displaying faces in the crowd and posting them on the Internet (and, to be clear, this legal position is somewhat in doubt), Street View doesn’t benefit from including those faces, and where Google can easily blur them it should.

–Matt

A friend, and avid yoga practitioner, once asked me whether a series of yoga postures, or asanas, could be protected by copyright.  After all, the Copyright Act explicitly protects choreography which, like yoga, is nothing more than a related series of movements.  The postures themselves are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old and firmly in the public domain, but what about a person’s selection and arrangement of those postures?  Assuming that arrangement is original would it be protected as a form of choreography?

The most persuasive argument on this issue comes from none other than William Patry, one of the most respected voices on copyright law, who answers the question “no”.   2 Patry on Copyright, § 4:22.  Why?  What’s the difference between yoga and choreography?  Simply put, yoga and other exercise routines are functional and concerned with achieving some health benefit.  Choreography and other related arts are purely aesthetic.  Copyright law concerns itself only with promoting and protecting the aesthetic expression of ideas and not functional routines – no matter their health benefits or ability to achieve Moksha.

–Matt

That’s how John Maddox, president of SellMyBusiness.com, describes his 18-month old start-up in this article by dbusiness Magazine.  SellMyBusiness.com provides small businesses — which the article tells us account for nearly 90 percent of all companies in America — access to prospective buyers and sellers, as well as resources to plan and execute a sale.  The resources are not, however, a substitute for good legal counsel.  So start shopping but, after you’ve acquired your next target, give us a call.

–Matt

In 1994, a theater outside Chicago mounted a production of The Most Happy Fella using the same star and renting the same sets from the Broadway production which ran two years earlier.  The director of the Broadway production, Gerald Gutierrez, sued the Chicago production for plagiarizing Mr. Gutierrez’s stage directions.

In 1996, Joe Mantello, director of the Off-Broadway and Broadway productions of Terrence McNally’s play Love! Valour! Compassion!, sued a Florida regional theater for copying almost verbatim his staging of the play, including copying an opening tableau of the characters created by Mr. Mantello but not included in the original script.

In 2004, an Off-Off Broadway production titled Tam Lin fired its director during tech rehearsals.  The show went on.  The director sued not just to recover unpaid director fees but also for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for the production’s use of his stage directions, which he claimed were his copyrightable work.

In 2006, the creators and designers of the Broadway production of Urinetown! accused two regional productions of the show of plagiarizing their direction, choreography and design.

All of the cases cited above settled before trial.  The unresolved question in each of these cases was whether stage directions in a theatrical production are even copyrightable.  Under U.S. copyright law, every work is copyrightable if it is “original” and “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.”  Dance choreography has long enjoyed the presumption of copyright, but are stage directions really “fixed” and do they rise to a level of originality that is sufficient to achieve copyright protection?  Perhaps more importantly should stage directions be copyrightable?  Would this really “promote” the progress of the arts, which is the aim of copyright law?  If stage directions are copyrightable, what are the potential repercussions for the theater community?

These questions and more will be addressed in a panel discussion with directors, playwrights, and lawyers at Wayne State University’s Hilberry Theatre at the next meeting of the Arts, Communications, Entertainment, and Sports (ACES) Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan on January 22, 2009 at 5:30 p.m.  Please contact me if you are interested in attending.

–Matt

(Hat tip: Jesse Green, THEATER; Exit, Pursued by A Lawyer, N.Y. Times, Jan. 29, 2006.)

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the 22^nd Annual Ernst & Young National Entrepreneur of the Year Awards (otherwise known as EOY) in Palm Spring, CA.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that my wife is a director of marketing in Ernst & Young’s Detroit office and manages several regional EOY programs, including the Central Great Lakes region which includes Southeast Michigan.  In addition, in past years, Safford & Baker has been a sponsor of the Emerging Growth Category for the Central Great Lakes program.  Winners from the regional programs go on to compete at the national level in Palm Springs.  A list of this year’s award winners from the Central Great Lakes region can be found here.

The National EOY awards ceremony is preceded by the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum, a four-day gathering of some of the best and brightest of American business.  This year’s keynote speakers included Jack Welch (former Chairman and CEO of General Electric), Robert Nardelli (Chairman and CEO of Chrysler), Guy Kawasaki (author of Rules for Revolutionaries and The Art of the Start), Chris Gardner (author of The Pursuit of Happyness), Marcus Buckingham (author of First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Best Managers Do Differently and Now, Discover Your Strengths), and Geena Davis (Academy Award winning actress).

You can learn more about the National EOY awards here, the Strategic Growth Forum here, and the EOY program in your region here.

–Matt