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Topics: Legal affairs

  • Australia’s approach to online enforcement for copyright infringement

    Michael Williams heads the intellectual property group at Australian law firm Gilbert + Tobin, and played an instrumental role in advocating for the introduction of site blocking under Australian copyright law.
    In this conversation with PitchMark legal advisor Frank Rittman, he elaborates on how Australian legislation deals with Internet service providers whose networks are used by their custom

  • The damage that fake goods can do to brands is very real

    Counterfeit products are the bane of many industries, and most of these products are manufactured in and distributed from Asia. What can companies do to protect and enforce their intellectual property rights?
    Andrew Bradshaw is the President of the Asian Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, an organization that coordinates IP investigations for some of the world’s leading brands, and h

  • What factors make a country more pro-copyright?

    The implementation of the European Union’s 2019 Digital Single Market Directive, which is the new legislative act adopted by the European Union to adapt copyright to the evolving digital environment, remains in varying states of implementation among its 27 member nations.
    In this discussion, Ted Shapiro – partner and head of the Brussels office of Wiggin, a law firm that specializes in media,

  • What creatives and IP lawyers need to learn about one another

    A partner and head of IP at TSMP Law Corporation, Adrian Tan brings a unique perspective to the field of IP law, since he first made his name as a creator of IP. As a young man in Singapore, he wrote the best-selling novels The Teenage Textbook and The Teenage Workbook. Through these early book deals, he began to understand intellectual property.
    As a lawyer, Adrian now helps others protect th

  • AI's strengths and limitations in IP protection

    Artificial intelligence – and facial recognition technology in particular - has become an essential component of law enforcement due to its increased efficiency in identifying suspected criminals and missing persons using enhanced imaging data.
    In this conversation, Jay Jhaveri – Managing Director, Asia-Pacific, of Captis Intelligence – discusses ongoing pace of rapid developments in AI technol

  • Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell's evolving strategies for her IP

    The Sex and the City franchise is set for yet another go at the zeitgeist via a 10-episode series titled And Just Like That. Leading ladies Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis are reprising their roles, while Kim Cattrall is not returning this time. But while this core four are probably most associated with Sex and the City these days, it is author Candace Bushnell who made this

  • 5 reasons innovators should use PitchMark

    Prevention is better than cure. That’s why when we buy a vehicle, we buy an insurance plan for it too. But what safeguards do innovators have when it comes to their ideas?
    That’s where PitchMark comes in. Idea theft is a problem that many innovators face, and the financial loss and hurt feelings that arise from seeing your ideas copied by others without consent, credit and compensation can be

  • Tarantino’s controversial Pulp Fiction NFTs offer a glimpse of entertainment’s future

    When it was released in 1994, Pulp Fiction was lauded for its innovative breaking of the chronological order, its distinctive dialogue, and for break-out performances from Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Travolta. It was one of the movies that propelled the 1990s wave of indie cinema, and its writer-director Quentin Tarantino became one of Hollywood’s most celebrated auteurs.
    And it l

  • “Cheat codes” for creativity: Designer Virgil Abloh leaves behind a provocative legacy

    The fashion world is mourning the passing of Virgil Abloh, the 41-year-old artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection, from cancer.
    He leaves behind a formidable legacy. When he began his tenure at Louis Vuitton in 2018, Abloh – the son of Ghanaian immigrants who had made their new home in the United States – became the first black man to take on the artistic direction of that fa

  • Rip-off or not: A tale of two blue dresses

    African fashion designer Bayanda Khathini, who specialises in high-end traditional beaded wedding dresses, has sent a letter of demand to Sello Medupe, the owner of fashion label Scalo. The issue: Khathini believes that a dress Scalo designed for former Miss South Africa, Tamaryn Green, copies a dress designed by Khathini in 2019. 
    Khathini asserts that his unique aesthetic style is due to his

  • How to use PitchFeed

    PitchMark deters the theft of your concepts, creations, proposals, business plans, music — basically, any ideas that you conceive and want to protect as your own when submitting these ideas for pitches to potential clients. Read more here about how the PitchMark Certificate helps you to do this.
    Your idea ownership gains another layer of protection when you opt to appear on PitchFeed. This sect

  • Gucci protects its IP fiercely, but plays a different game for the IP of others

    With the movie House of Gucci opening this week, the Italian fashion house is in the spotlight for the passionate vendettas that occurred back when the company was a family-owned business. The current Gucci, however, is now owned by a French luxury-goods conglomerate, and it knows a good branding opportunity when it sees one. The company opened up its archives to the movie’s production team, and t

  • From paella to kimchi, countries are using IP benchmarks to protect beloved national dishes

    Everybody gets upset when their ideas get stolen, and if that idea happens to be a beloved national dish, then get ready for sparks to fly. Perhaps because food is intimately tied to notions of cultural identity, improper culinary appropriation – or the perception of it – tends to make people extremely salty and the ensuring furore extra spicy.
    Recently, the government of Valencia – the region

  • How to use the PitchMark Certificate

    All innovators want to benefit from their original ideas. To do so usually involves discussing or pitching the idea with others, in order to get funding, marketing, or feedback.
    Unfortunately, this opens up innovators to the risk of idea theft. Copyright protection mechanisms do exist, but they can be costly and cumbersome. Here’s where PitchMark can help.
    When innovators register their id

  • By creating her own IP, model-turned-memoirist Emily Ratajkowski is taking control

    She shot to fame by appearing in the music video for the song “Blurred Lines”. Now, model-actress Emily Ratajkowski is also an author whose debut memoir, My Body, comes out this month.
    Her book arrives on the heels of an essay she wrote for New York magazine in 2020. Titled “Buying Myself Back”, the piece – which went viral – detailed several harrowing instances where she tried to gain control

  • How important is it to own your IP? Taylor Swift knows all too well

    We last wrote about pop star Taylor Swift’s decision to re-record her albums made under the Big Machine label here, and explained why this move was necessary for her goal of gaining the master rights to these re-recorded songs.
    Now, the second of these re-recorded albums, Red, is being released. And Swift is making the media rounds to reiterate exactly why she feels it’s important for artists t

  • Big Tech has an IP theft problem

    Whether or not one finds the idea of a metaverse exhilarating or creepy, Facebook has not been a company that inspires much affection for quite a while, thanks to its data privacy controversies. So when the company recently announced it was changing its name to Meta (inspired by the concept of the metaverse), the mocking memes were quick to proliferate.
    Among the many jokes made at Meta’s expe

  • How royal couple Harry and Meghan upped their IP game

    With a musical, a movie and recent and upcoming seasons of the immensely popular series The Crown all featuring the late Princess Diana, the troubled life of the British icon is capturing the popular imagination once again.
    In the real world, her two sons are navigating life under the public spotlight in their own ways. Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, in particular, have carved out th

  • With COP26 in progress, it’s time to look at the role of IP in sustainability

    It’s been called the world's best last chance to get the climate crisis under control, and it’s happening right now. This week, representatives from over 190 countries gather in Glasgow for the United Nations' 26th Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP26). Even the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeff Bezos and Ellie Goulding are expected, and esteemed figures

  • That's not really Shah Rukh Khan — the growing prevalence of deepfakes throws up urgent IP questions

    For those celebrating the festival of Deepavali/Diwali in India this month, take a second look at any seasonal ads starring celebrities. You might just be looking at a digital avatar created by artificial intelligence rather than the real star.
    Rephrase.ai, a Bengaluru-based startup, says in a report published on Rest of World that they are working on some of these ads. Here’s what they do: us

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