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Meeting held Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - 7:30pm Shoreline Community College, Shoreline, WA
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Kevin Jablonski, an attorney with the firm of Lane Powell in Seattle, returned for another semi-
regular update about legal issues and the audio industry. The April 22 presentation was held at
Shoreline Community College in Shoreline, WA. 12 AES members and 10 non-members attended. Kevin also has degrees in electrical engineering and audio production, sits on the Board for the Washington State Patent Law Association and is a former member of the AES PNW committee.
At this talk, Kevin spoke about recent legal decisions and proposals regarding changing copyright and music licensing, the patentability of software, infringement cases, and Supreme Court cases. He began with a review of basic copyright law and concepts, then introduced several changes
being proposed:
After a break, door prizes were awarded:
Returning to the session, we continued with a discussion of software patents. A 2014 decision ("Alice v. CLS") is having interesting effects on software patents right now. Next, the recent case of copyright infringement on a Marvin Gaye song by Robin Thicke/Pharrell Williams et al was discussed. Kevin felt this was a poor jury decision, and likely to have negative effects. He also mentioned the old George Harrison "My Sweet Lord" case v. The Chiffons "He's So Fine," and the case of Garcia v Google, where a person made the claim they had been tricked into appearing in a video, and thus a copyright infringement. Finally, the recent case of TV rebroadcaster Aereo was discussed.
Reported by Gary Louie, PNW Section Secretary |