4/12/22 -- The Copyright Office has (finally) appointed its first economist. Brent Lutes will be responsible for advising the Register about the economic impact of domestic and international copyright programs and policies. Read the announcement.

4/7/22 -- The Copyright Office has launched the Copyright Claims Board website at ccb.gov. The Board, established by the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act of 2020, will hear copyright disputes involving claims seeking damages of up to $30,000, and will begin accepting claims this year.

3/31/22 -- The U.S. district court for the District of Columbia has issued a decision in. American Society for Testing Materials v Public Resource.org, holding that PublicResource.org's reposting of 184 privately authored standards that had been incorporated by reference into statutes and regulations is fair use under § 107. The opinion is accompanied by a 182 page appendix that contains a standard-by-standard assessment of the fair use factors.

3/28/22 -- This morning, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in No. 21-869, Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith. The Second Circuit's decision is here, and the ScotusBlog page is here.

3/10/22 -- The 9th Circuit has decided Gray v. Hudson, affirming a lower court decision that threw out a jury verdict in Marcus Gray's lawsuit claiming that Katy Perry's Dark Horse infringed Gray's Joyful Noise. The court writes: "The trial record compels us to conclude that the ostinatos at issue here consist entirely of commonplace musical elements, and that the similarities between them do not arise out of an original combination of these elements."

3/3/22 -- The members of Artikal Sound System, a Florida reggae band, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Dua Lipa on Tuesday, claiming that Lipa's hit "Levitating" infringes the band's copyright in its 2017 song, "Live Your Life." Billboard's Bill Donahue has the story, and has posted a copy of the complaint, and recordings of both songs. Music theorist Adam Neely has posted a comparison of the two songs to his YouTube channel.

3/2/22 -- Representatives Deutch and Issa have introduced H.R. 6769, the “Protecting and Enhancing Public Access to Codes Act” or "Pro Codes Act," which would permit copyrighted works that have been incorporated by reference into any Federal, State, or municipal law or regulation to retain copyright protection only if the owner makes the work available for public viewing at no monetary cost.

2/25/22 -- The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Unicolors v H&M Hemmes. Unicolors sued H&M for infringement of copyrighted fabric designs and a jury found infringement. H&M moved for judgment as a matter of law on the ground that 17 USC § 411 requires copyright registration as a prerequisite to suit, and that Unicolor's application for registration misstated the dates multiple fabric designs had been published, so its certificate of registration wasn't valid. The Court decided that § 411(b) preserves the validity of a certificate of registration as long as the copyright holder "lacked knowledge" that the information on its application was in inaccurate, and that Unicolors misunderstood the law defining the date of publication for purposes of registration and therefore didn't know that the date of publication it included on its application was inaccurate. Justice Breyer wrote the opinion for the court; Justice Thomas dissented.

2/18/22 -- Olympic figure skaters Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier skated to a recording of House of the Rising Sun in Beijing. Robert and Aron Maderosian, who do business under the name Heavy Young Heathens, believe that that recording is in fact one they made, and that Knierim and Frazier used it without permission. The Maderosian brothers have filed a copyright infringement suit against Knierim, Frazier, the US Figure Skating Association, NBC, Peacock, the USA Network, and Comcast. Read Edvard Pettersson's story for Courthouse News.

2/18/22 -- The Copyright Review Board released a decision affirming the refusal to register a work authored by a computer program.

2/18/22 -- The state of Maryland enacted a law requiring ebook publishers to offer ebooks to public libraries on the same terms as the terms on which they offer ebooks to the general public. The Association of American Publishers sued in federal court for a determination that the Maryland law was preempted by the federal copyright statute. On Wednesday, District Judge Boardman granted the AAP a preliminary injunction, ruling that the organization had shown a likelihood of demonstrating that the Maryland law is preempted.

2/7/22 --The estates of George Carlin and Robin Williams have filed suit against Pandora, claiming that its licenses to stream comedy sound recordings don't authorize it to perform the jokes, which are separately protected as literary works by their own copyrights. Read Eriq Gardner's story for Puck News.

2/2/22 -- Today, Representatives Victoria Spartz (R-IN) and Mondaire Jones (D-NY) introduced the Freedom to Repair Act, to permit the circumvention of copy-protection and access protection technology for the purpose of diagnosis or repair of electronic devices.

1/10/22 -- If it's January, it must be time for pundits to list the most pressing copyright issues to watch in 2022. You can find a sampling here, here, here, here, and here.

12/31/21 -- On January 1, 2022, hundreds of thousands of works will enter the public domain, included works first published in 1926 and all sound recordings published before 1923. Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain is keeping track.