Adult webmasters and other industry professionals gathered together last week at Internext Expo to listen to a panel of industry attorneys talk about important legal issues that affect the adult entertainment business.Adult webmasters and other industry professionals gathered together last week at Internext Expo to listen to a panel of industry attorneys talk about important legal issues that affect the adult entertainment business. Internext Expo is a semi-annul business convention geared towards the adult entertainment industry. The various legal speakers featured at Internext Expo covered a broad range of legal topics that included patents and copyrights, record-keeping laws, obscenity, and spam. The first legal seminar took place on the first day of the convention, and the first speaker was Ira Levy of Grand Media/Goodwin Procter. Mr. Levy spoke about the nature of patents, and then referred to a number of recent legal cases, both ongoing and completed, that might be of interest to adult industry professionals.
How can a business know which patents might impact its business activities and which just do not apply? Levy referred to Acacia’s patent on streaming media as one of the “silly” patents, but advised the audience to look at the claims of any patent when trying to determine its possible applicability. Suddenly discovering that someone else’s patent impacts your business model can result in significant losses that might include royalty payments or a halt on future business transactions.
Moving on to other issues, Mr. Levy’s referred to the well-known legal dispute between tennis star Anna Kournikova and Penthouse magazine, a case known as Kournikova Versus General Media. Kournikova sued General Media over pictures published in Penthouse magazine that were purported to be nude photos of the tennis star. It was later discovered that the pictures were not of Kournikova. According to Mr. Levy, General Media was successful in fending off the charges – which he says shows that there may be some safe harbors for publishers in these instances. Nonetheless, Mr. Levy noted that it’s always legally risky to dabble in content that features known celebrities, since such individuals are far more likely to aggressively protect their public image than would the average model.
Next up was the case of Playboy Versus Netscape. The issue here concerned the selling of search results to one company based on keywords made up of another company’s trademarks. In other words, is it legally okay for a company like Pepsi Cola to buy their way into Google’s search results for instances when users search for “Coca-Cola” or other competitors? According to Mr. Levy, the interesting aspect of this case is that the purchaser of the keywords was sued – not the seller; that’s a reversal from previous cases that tackled this same basic issue.
The presentation then moved on to Brockmeyer Versus Hearst, a dispute which Mr. Levy argued shows the limitations of trademark protections. This case involved a fight over the use of the simple identifier “O,” used both by a fetish magazine and by Oprah magazine. The court ruled that there was no likelihood of consumer confusion, yet according to Mr. Levy this case illustrates the importance of developing unique brand names.
Mr. Levy next referred to Nova Versus Kisma, an ongoing case over adult video bootlegging which is, amongst other things, examining the applicability of copyright protections to obscene works. In other words, if a work is legally obscene then should it be provided with the protection of copyright law? So far the court has said that copyrights do apply to obscene works, but Mr. Levy warned that a reversal in this area could have an “extreme impact” on the adult entertainment business.
The final case mentioned in this presentation was Bosley Versus Wildwett.com. This dispute occurred after a website obtained and published pictures of a local news anchor engaging in a wet t-shirt contest at a local bar. The anchor argued that her image was being used inappropriately to promote sexually explicit materials, and the court agreed – ruling that the model release she signed was insufficient for the manner in which the images were used. Mr. Levy again stressed that webmasters should watch out for content of people who consider themselves celebrities – even if the person in question is of questionable fame.
For more information on Internext Expo, please visit www.internext-expo.com.
Connor Young is Editor-in-Chief of YNOT News. He has been involved with the online adult entertainment business since 1997, and also serves as Editor-in-Chief of The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine. Connor can be reached at connor@ynot.com.
