26
Mere ideas are not, as others have said, protected by copyright. However, the police officer in such a situation may have a duty of confidentiality, particularly if s/he is informed that the contents of the phone are confidential.
For example the "Officer's Code of Conduct" of Canton Ohio, says:
Whatever a Police Officer sees, hears or learns of ...
9
can I sue them for stealing my idea?
england-and-wales
The case of Oxford v Moss 1979 established that information, in and of itself, cannot be stolen. So, in answer to the question posed: No
However, a civil claim may be appropriate if the officer has been found guilty of either a criminal offence, such as s.1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 or of (gross-)...
6
Your ideas for startups or inventions might qualify as trade secrets. Trade secret law is not uniform internationally so this might or might not help you. But it is very uniform within the US.
4
If you have a password protected phone, these ideas probably mostly qualify as trade secrets. A law enforcement officer using trade secrets obtained for a limited purpose in furtherance of investigating a potential crime who used the trade secrets without permission would likely be guilty of theft of trade secrets because the personal use would exceed the ...
4
united-kingdom
Under the Borders, Citizenship, and Immigration Act 2009, ss 14 et seq, the wrongful disclosure of information gained by a customs officer in their search is a criminal offence. Thus, the misuse of your information (ie, your ideas) would not be lawful.
However, the problem is that UK Border Force Officers wear two hats: they are both customs ...
4
Short Answer
Is there any realistic situation where a court decision might hinge on
producing the original physical paper certificate?
Yes. But there are alternative options to prove the same thing, even then.
A copyright registration certificate is not like a dollar bill or an original promissory note, where a copy isn't as good as the original, even ...
3
You're talking about sites like Youtube, so I'll focus on that.
That quote, which you bolded, was over-simplified. The actual law is
17 USC 512 (c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users.
(1) In general. A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other ...
answered Oct 8 at 21:35
Harper - Reinstate Monica
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3
If soemoen sues you for infringement of a design copyright, it would be a valid defense that the plaintiff had in fact taken the design elements from your prior work, or indeed from the work of a third party, and so had no valid copyright. Proving this may be easy or hard, depending on the specifics of the situation.
Registration will prove that your work ...
3
When you put a logo that is a legally recognized trademark or servicemark in an acknowledgements section of a document, you are not infringing on the mark.
A mark if infringed by someone using it when it is used in a manner that falsely communicates an affiliation with, or an endorsement of, the mark owner of the type of good or service that is protected by ...
3
The tape is not in the public domain. Either they have granted permission to copy, or they have not taken action to pursue infringement. The current youngmoney website does not (on its public-facing page) grant any permissions, but things can change. In addition, permission could be granted in a specific instance as a personal favor or as a contract deal. ...
2
The patented RSA algorithm (public key exchange) was independently developed by Rivest, Shamir and Adleman. However the algorithm had been found much earlier and secretly by Ellis and Cocks. This was eventually revealed, but the RSA patent remained valid until it expired in 2000.
The prior art must be known to the patent office before the patent is granted ...
2
In copyright law, such an app is a joint work, and each developer is a co-author. Either may use or license the work, but any profits are jointly owned, and in the absence of any specific agreement to the contrary, must be split equally.
If one co-author is marketing the work, and sharing the proceeds equally with the othe co-author, s/he is acting legally ...
2
Is there a short enough sample length (1 second, 1/10 second, 1/100 of
second?) where the distribution of the audio clip isn't infringement?
There is no arbitrary rule.
Audio samples (and opposed to the underlying compositions which audio samples are a performance of) are held to the most strict standards of infringement (particularly when it comes to ...
1
substantial similarity is the test used when the plaintiff claims that a work is infringing because it is an imitation of the source work, or is based on the source work, but the defendant claims either that the allegedly infringi8ng work was merely inspired by the source work, or was independently conceived.
When actual copying is admitted or proved (as ...
1
A per-user subscription fee alone would be unlikely to cause safe harbor status to be lost. However, if much of the provider's business is in fact due to infringing content, such that vigorously acting to remove infringing content would significantly harm the provider's income, that might well cause the loss of safe harbor status. Much the same is true of ...
1
There are no copyright issues in making an angel
Angels have been depicted in art and literature for hundreds of years. What an angel looks like is clearly public domain.
Making an angel that looks like that angel is a derivative work
If your angel copies whatever it is that is distinct and unique about the other angel, then that’s making a derivative work ...
1
united-statescopyright
Ideas are not copyrightable
In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
17 USC 102
Copyright only is ...
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