Well, now it's time for our daily Bloomberg Law Brief, exploring legal issues in the news, and Today, Bloomberg Law host dun Grasso discusses the Supreme Court decision in Star Athletic of the Varsity Brands, which will have major ramifications for copyright law in America. She speaks with Craig Whitney, a partner at Frankfurt Curnet, Klein and Seltz Craig. The
majority opinion was written by Justice Clarence Thomas. Explain his reasoning, please sure, Well, they took a large part from the Copyright Act directly and adhered closely to the language of the Act, which was actually fairly admirable, and ruled that the designs on the cheerleading uniforms that issue were protectable under the Copyright Act because the Copyright Act protects pgs works, pictorial graphics cultural works that are part of useful articles
if they can be separately identified independent of those useful articles and are independently eligible for protection. So that was that was his stated reasoning. Uh, And that is how in this case the designs that issue are at least eligible for copyright protection. So Justice Stephen Brier was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, and he couldn't seem to get past the fact that Varsity registered pictures of uniforms, not the designs on them. Tell us a little bit about
his dissent. I think he was concerned with the potential breath of the majority's decision. The majority held as I mentioned that these designs were eligible for protection, and Justice Briars looked at the underlying copper registrations, which are pictures of designs on cheerleading uniforms, and thought, well, then, really, anything could in theory be eligible for protection if you just take a picture of it and registered the copyright office.
How important is this decision to the fashion industry. I think it's pretty important for two reasons. Um. The main reason is that I think there was a perception in the industry that there was limited protection for fashion designs. And I don't know that that was an accurate perception or not, but I think it was a prevailing view of a lot of designers and a lot of companies that operate on the basis of being able to take
other designs and repackage them. That's Craig Waitney, a partner at Frankfurt Current in Klein and self speaking at the Bloomberg Law host during Grosso. You can listen to Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm Wall Street Time here on Bloomberg Radio Now. Among top legal stories from Bloomberg Law, Federal Appeals Court will now decide whether to overturn a lower court's order partially blocking President Trump's revised travel ban.
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