COURT DEALS BLOW TO CBS’S ELECTRONIC BILLBOARDS

Unlike its principal competitors, CBS Corp. has pretty much all of its business in broadcasting. Sure, it has its Showtime and cable sports channels, and it releases an occasional low-budget movie. But mostly it is limited to broadcasting. A significant exception is its billboard business, CBS Outdoor, which it has been attempting to fuse with […]

JUDGE REJECTS SAG DISSIDENTS’ ARGUMENTS; MERGER VOTE TO GO AHEAD

Rejecting arguments from a dissident group of Screen Actors Guild members led by Martin Sheen and Ed Harris, a federal judge on Wednesday permitted a vote on the merger of SAG and the American Federation of Television Artists to go forward. In his opinion, U.S. District Judge S. James Otero said, “Voting in favor of […]

HACKING DETECTIVE MUST NAME HIGHER-UPS, COURT RULES

A British appeals court has turned down efforts by the private detective at the center of the U.K. telephone hacking scandal to avoid revealing the names of the higher-ups at The News of the World and/or News International who paid him to intercept the voicemail of British celebrities. The detective, Glenn Mulcaire, is expected to […]

JUDGE GIVES STUDIO TEMPORARY CURE FOR HANGOVER

Warner Bros. won the first round in the copyright battle over the use of Mike Tyson’s famous tattoo on one of the characters in The Hangover Part II, but it appeared almost certain that the studio will ultimately lose the legal fight. U.S. Judge Catherine D. Perry ruled in St. Louis that she would not […]

JUDGE THROWS OUT SUIT AGAINST ALLEGED PIRATES

Efforts by movie studios to join thousands of cases of alleged piracy have suffered a setback after a federal judge in Texas tossed out a case brought by Larry Flynt Productions against several thousand John Does, whom it accused of illegally downloading its movie This Ain’t Avatar XXX, the website TorrentFreak reported on Wednesday. Judge […]