The music industry has significantly changed in light of the popularity of streaming media, making it harder for artists to monetize their music based on traditional models such as record sales and concerts. Merchandising has become a lucrative supplement to album sales and some artists are seeking to capitalize on this trend through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

One of the underlying tensions in intellectual property law is the struggle between providing adequate protection for the owner while ensuring that the processes to get these protections are not so burdensome that they either deter the owner from seeking protection for his intellectual property or unnecessarily restrict his right to remedy. For some time, patent trolls were the clearly targeted enemy.

Copyright does not apply in the same way to computer code and software as it does to literary works and works of art. For example, if you purchase a book from a bookstore, you obtain usage rights through the "first-sale" doctrine of copyright law. This means that you have the right to resell the book either privately or through a third-party system. However, in computer-related fields, developers often impose an end-user-license-agreement (EULA) that restricts the user’s rights to a limited or personal license.

The recent Supreme Court ruling in Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc. makes it clear that if the Federal Circuit wishes to reconsider a district court’s decision on factual matters underlying a patent claim construction dispute, it may do so only if the district court’s ruling on that matter was clearly erroneous. This holding has the potential to significantly change the patent litigation game, as it makes it much more difficult for the losing party of a claim construction dispute to overturn an unfavorable district court decision.

Can tragedies be trademarked?

After the Paris massacre at Charlie Hebdo’s office in early January, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) received two applications to trademark "Je Suis Charlie" ("We Are Charlie"), a phrase embraced internationally in response to the January terrorist attack. One of the applicants is a trust from California who is seeking the trademark for charity purposes. The other, a trading group in Florida, aims to use the phrase commercially in apparel, accessories, and dining ware.

Freeplay is a website that boasts "15,000 songs, free music for YouTube and more." On February 9, 2015, two YouTube producers, Machinima and Collective Digital Studio, filed suit against FreePlay for (1) violation of unfair competition laws and (2) declaratory judgment stating that Plaintiffs are not infringing copyright despite Freeplay’s actions.

Grooveshark, an online service provider (OSP) of streamed music that claims to have 35 million users and a library of 20 million songs, somehow managed to maintain its groove amidst constant attacks by the recording industry for alleged copyright infringement over the past few years. However, a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York may trigger the end of Grooveshark’s good fortunes.

Apple, and subsequently Google, have proposed to employ new mobile operating systems that would privilege only users to decrypt the data stored on their devices.  The new encryption scheme elevates customer privacy, but at the cost of alienating local and federal law enforcement as well as forcing Congress to address the precarious balance of privacy concerns against security fears.