Intellectual Property Podcast Reviews

This business works because of intellectual property law so it’s always a good idea to brush up on current legal events within the entertainment industry. New laws and court decisions are constantly evolving the way we do business so I’ve reviewed a few podcast resources below. Hopefully at least one of them will help you stay up to date on a regular basis.

Entertainment Law Update

Episode: 19

This is a great episode. Gordon Firemark covers some royalty issues concerning digital downloads and how the courts have approached artist royalty payments for digital download purchases. The issue is whether or not artist should get the publishing royalty rate or the sales rate, which is general, much less lucrative for the artists. I don’t think this will be an issue for long because labels will structure their new contracts to specify downloads as earning the same artist royalty rate as CD sales. However, I suspect a court decisions might change the labels rights to structure their agreements in this way. Digital downloads aren’t worth much to start with and giving the artist the publishing rate for these would actually hurt the music industry in a bad way. Digital sales are replacing CD sales and without the same percent of profit going to the labels they will lose even more money and the music industry will sink.

Intellectual Property Law Podcast Series

Episode: Is Net Neutrality a Virtual Taking?

This is a great podcast by Suffolk University. They explore the issues of net neutrality in this episode and the potential pros and cons of both sides of the argument. This is an episode I highly recommend because laws governing the Internet affect every type of business. What are the stipulations of ISP’s throttling content? The consumers receiving information at their home through the Internet pay for the right to so. Should business have the right to pay a premium to the ISP’s to have their content sent quicker? Is this unfair competition? Will this hurt the development of the Internet by allowing only well funded projects to the front of the pack? Does this mean future services like YouTube and Facebook that were started from the grassroots will not be able to have the same startup potential anymore? Will this hurt or does it sound legitimate? These are some important questions that his podcast covers.

Intellectual Property Law Podcast Series

Episode: Owning Markets

This episode addresses some current issues lying in trademark law. A lot of cases have appeared in recent years where companies are suing others in order to protect their trademarks value. This episode addresses the question of how far does a marks value reach? Does it reach into a market that a company has not expanded into but might decide to in the future? The speaker uses Apple’s mark as an excuse. They questions whether allowing other companies to using a similar mark in a different market is ok even though it might limit any future attempts by Apple to enter that market. One thing I like a lot about this one is that it is a little more one sided and they strike down some of the current arguments in trademark law cases by pointing out the flaws in the arguments.

I hope everybody sees the importance in these issues and pays close attention to the outcome of the cases in question. One single court decision can change how business is done entirely, especially in the entertainment industry. Intellectual property is a fairly new concept to the world and the relevant laws are still evolving.