Intellectual Property Blog

Who Owns the Moment? Rights in Sports Photos and Videos

One of the most addictive parts of sport is its ability to capture our imagination and create enduring memories. If we are lucky, we can capture visual depictions of those moments to relive the memories. Whether we are capturing the experience in person on our cameras or at home and watching the experience on our televisions or through social media, sports memories and video or photographic depictions of those memories go hand-in-hand. For me it was Kirk Gibson rounding the bases after his 1988 game winning homerun and Reggie Miller’s 8 points in 8.9 seconds (a/k/a the night he  directed a choke gesture to Spike Lee). For my son, by far the biggest sports fan I know, it is probably a tie between Omar Cooper’s toe-tap game-winning touchdown over Penn State or the Sports Illustrated cover-worthy diving touchdown by Indiana’s Heisman-winning quarterback that sealed Indiana’s improbable national championship. Many people reading this will know those images. But how? Not everyone watched those games. Those memories were captured and redisplayed. Many people claim rights in those redisplayed memories.   More >

When Knowledge Isn’t Enough: What Cox v. Sony Means for DMCA Agents

Can an online service provider be held liable for copyright infringement simply because it knows infringement is occurring and does not immediately terminate a user’s access? On March 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court answered that question with a decisive no, delivering a unanimous opinion. More >

Design That Deserves a Toast: How IP Law Influences Alcohol Branding

In January, there is an official celebration day known as National Beer Can Appreciation Day. That’s really a thing; it occurs once a year to celebrate January 24, 1935, the historic day when beer was first sold in cans.

So that momentous occasion is inspiring us in the Intellectual Property Services Group here at McBRAYER to explain the types of intellectual property protections available to protect the appearance of beer cans.  More >

How the Government Shutdown Impacts Intellectual Property Owners

It has been a week since the United States government shut down. With no agreement between Congress on a funding bill for fiscal year 2026, the United States government ceased its non-essential operations at 12:01 am on October 1, 2025. More >

When Art Meets Auto: Daniel Arsham, Quavo, and the Battle Over a Ferrari Sculpture

The intersection of art and intellectual property law is rarely quiet and the recent dispute involving artist Daniel Arsham and rapper Quavo is revving up that conversation in a high-profile way. At the center of the dispute? A clay sculpture of a Ferrari crafted by Arsham and allegedly used without permission by Quavo in a music video and related promotional materials. More >

Can AI-Generated Work Be Copyrighted? New Guidance from the Copyright Office Provides Clarity

In January 2025, the Copyright Office released Part 2 of its regulatory guidelines on copyright protection and artificial intelligence (AI). Part 1 of the report, which addressed the legal and policy issues related to AI and copyright, was released on July 21, 2024. Part 2, titled "Copyrightability," focused on the statutory requirement that a work must be created by "human authorship" and examined whether this requirement is met when works contain elements generated by AI. More >

Is a Text Prompt in AI Software the Same as a Brushstroke to a Canvas? The Copyright Office Thinks Not.

On September 26, 2024, Jason Allen sued the Copyright Office in Colorado over the Copyright Office’s 2022 refusal to register “his” work entitled “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial.” 1:24-cv-02665. The “his” in the preceding sentence is not my cynicism about Mr. Allen’s authorship of the work; it is simply the open question that can be objectively argued either way. Mr. Allen says it is his. The Copyright Office determined it is not. More >

No, Google, I Don’t Want You to Write My Letter

The 2024 Olympics have come to a close, and as we all look back on the memories made and records set in Paris (and Tahiti, of course!), I can’t help but focus on a commercial that irritated me to no end. The commercial promoted Google’s Gemini AI technology by featuring a proud father working with his impressionable daughter, who the ad tells us was looking up to track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The doting but modest father explains that his daughter “wants to show Sydney some love (by writing a letter), and I’m pretty good with words, but this has to be just right. So Gemini: Help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is, and be sure to mention that my daughter plans on breaking her world record one day.” More >

Are You Sure That’s Free? Content from Others in Your Social Media

Big business owners, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and influencers are all looking for boosts to their reputations that drive traffic and revenue their way. Using the parlance of the 2020s, they are looking to generate impressions and conversions through clever online marketing—usually leveraging the power and reach of social media platforms. Frequently this takes the form of sharing or reposting content already on social media, sometimes with a creative business-specific twist. More >

How Much “Dune” You Know about Copyright?

A few months ago, an NFT group known as “Spice DAO” made the news for paying nearly $3 million at auction for a rare book of filmmaker Alexander Jodorowsky’s storyboards and concept art for a never-to-be-made adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic science fiction novel Dune—and announcing their plans to use their purchase to make and sell their own adaptations and derivative works as well as copies of the book itself in NFT form. Of course, buying a copy of a book, no matter how rare, does not grant you the copyright or license to its contents. A clear gaff to be sure, which is then heightened by the fact that the purchase was funded almost entirely by investors and fans of the Dune franchise. But if purchasing a creative work does not give you rights to reproduce it, what does? We’ve put together this quick quiz to help you figure out when you do—and don’t—own the rights to a piece of intellectual property covered under copyright law. More >