The Artful Jurist

Actor Nicolas Cage has suffered a legal setback in his lawsuit against his former business manager, Samuel J. Levin.  Mr. Cage’s suit was dismissed by the court this week.  A counterclaim by Mr. Levin was also dismissed.

An Associated Press story states that the heart of the controversy is Mr. Cage’s claim that Mr. Levin mismanaged the actor’s affairs, leading to a serious financial collapse for Mr. Cage.  The suit sought damages of $20 million.  Mr. Levin countersued for unpaid fees, and, according to the A.P., claims Mr. Cage simply didn’t listen to his business manager’s advice.

Here I was, in my last post, musing about intellectual property rights that can be the root of battles in Hollywood divorces, and along come the news of actor Michael Douglas and his ex-wife, Diandra Douglas, now sparring in a New York court over who's entitled to what from Mr. Douglas's next movie.  Mr. Douglas has a sequel to Wall Street coming out next month, and Ms. Douglas has sued, claiming she's entitled to half his earnings from that film based on their agreement from their divorce in the years 2000.

The lawyers for the parties, of course, each claim the other side doesn't unstand the agreement.  Well, we'll leave that to them and the court to decide.  But, kind of like I was saying last week, when you're in a creative field, there's stuff that can be fought over in divorce that people in other fields just don't have to worry about.

Patricia Arquette, the actor who plays the clairvoyant “Medium” on the TV show of that name, is calling it quits with her husband, actor Thomas Jane.  According to news reports, Ms. Arquette has filed for divorce in Los Angeles.

I think it’s always sad to see a relationship end — even when I don’t personally know the people involved.  And our legal system doesn’t always make it easy for people to formally part, which only makes things worse for everyone.

But one important thing creative people ought to keep in mind when they’re going through a divorce.  Intellectual property is property, meaning it’s an asset that needs to be distributed when family assets are divvied up.  So, if an artist has, for example, written a book during the marriage, the property rights to that book are an asset that could become an issue of contention when the divorcing couple starts quibbling over who gets to take what.  That’s especially possible in community property states such as California.

I’m not suggesting Ms. Arquette or Mr. Jane have or will have anything to fight over.  I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen.  It’s just that the news of their parting sparked these thoughts about the intellectual property of people in the arts/entertainment industry, and I thought I’d share them.

I'm sorry to have to do this, but I'm turning off the "Comments" feature of this blog due to the fact that about 95 percent of the "comments" are really just commercial spam masquerading as generic "loved your show, babe," type of comments.  And the time it takes to read and delete all this spam could be better used for more productive endeavors.

But, for the genuine readers of the Artful Jurist, please don't let this stop you from sending your comments, questions, musings, etc.  I'm still just as interested as ever in receiving your thoughts.  You can send them by clicking on my name at the top of each post or by clicking the "Contact" link near the top of the page.

Artfully yours,

Rich Amada

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” doesn’t necessarily apply to the articles that appear in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.  The newspaper has teamed up with a new company called Righthaven whose purpose is to troll the Internet for websites that have illegally republished Review-Journal articles online and to instigate lawsuits against the infringers.

Most of the world thinks of “publishing” as something that involves the printing and selling of words or pictures on bound paper products.  But, from a legal standpoint, content is published anytime it is put into some format and made available to others.  That means putting something on a website -- whether it’s words, pictures, or sounds -- falls into the domain of publishing.  If you’re not the copyright owner of that material, republishing copyright protected matter runs afoul of the law.

Apparently, the Las Vegas Review-Journal was just ticked off enough about the republishing of its articles to send Righthaven out with a mandate to hunt and sue.  According to news reports (which I’m not going to republish here), Righthaven buys up the copyrights from the newspaper and then sues the people who’ve done the unauthorized web publishing.  The suits seek $75,000 in damages among other penalties.

This has raised some legal issues, such as Righthaven’s standing to sue for an infringement that occurred at a time prior to Righthaven actually having owned the copyright.