Podcasts

The Intellectual Property Law Podcast series has a lot of very helpful information. The first part goes over what intellectual property actually is and intellectual property law actually covers. This may be the most important part of the podcast. There are many different types of intellectual property and many ways to cover it.  Its important to know what kind of law you need to cover your intellectual property properly. There are patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secret law. Professor Beckerman-Rodau goes through each kind of intellectual property law. The most important types of intellectual property law for my business plan are copyright law and trademark law. This series has also showed how certain intellectual property laws can come up a bit short. Patents and copyrights eventually come to an end. Once the protection time is up, these pieces of intellectual property go into the public domain. Once in the public domain, anyone has legal access to it (Beckerman-Rodau , 2012). As Professor Beckerman-Rodau says in the podcast, this is where trade secrets may pay off more than a patent. His example was the trade secrets of Coca-Cola. If the company had used a patent for their recipe, it would be in the public domain by now. By using trade secrets, they have kept the recipe secret for over eighty years. (Beckerman-Rodau , 2012)

Episode 23 of Gordon Firemark’s Entertainment Law Update Podcast covers the topic of Righthaven. According to the podcast, people go around collecting copyrights and suing people that have used them. A lot of people just settle instead of fighting against the infringement charges. This brings around something to be very careful about. For my company, it may be possible to get sued by a group like this. This podcast shows that the courts are now more aware of these types of situations. It’s better to fight the charges than to just pay them off (Firemark, 2011).

Episode 29 of Gordon Firemark’s Entertainment Law Update Podcast goes over the 360 deal in the music industry. The 360 deal lets the recording company share in every part of the musician’s music career. According to the podcast, this type of deal is in violation of talent agency regulation acts in certain states (Firemark, 2012). The podcast focuses on the California label code (Firemark, 2012). It brings up a very important topic in general. Though my company is based in Pennsylvania and the podcast does not mention any sort of law in the state, it is an important thing to look into. There are laws that my company could break without even knowing about it. When starting deals with bands, we will have to look into Pennsylvania law to make sure everything will be legal.

Podcasts:

Beckerman-Rodau , A. (Performer) (2012, April 25). Ip law concentration. Intellectual Property Law Podcast Series. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from - http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/intellectual-property-law/id388454392

Firemark, G. (Performer) (2011, August 10). Episode 23. Entertainment Law Update. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.entertainmentlawupdate.com/2011/08/elu-episode-023-monkeying-around-with-copyright-law

Firemark, G. (Performer) (2012, March 29). Episode 29. Entertainment Law Update. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.entertainmentlawupdate.com/2012/03/episode-29-360-deals-rights-of-publicity/