The Battle For Copyright: Who Holds Ownership?

When looking at cases that involve intellectual property and legal ownership, one must consider the level of protection that the instance applies to. For example, the battle between Kanye West and Yeezy against Walmart has been raging over Walmart's sale of shoes that very closely resemble that of the Yeezy brand. Yeezy argues that these shoes are a direct copy of their product and that Walmart allowing the sale of these knock off shoes is damaging Yeezy and reducing sales of their shoes. Walmart argues that they do not personally approve of every item being sold through them as any claimed copies are not directly linked to Walmart and thus they are not responsible. This leads to the primary issue over the sale of a similar type of shoes by Walmart. The shoes themselves as sold by Yeezy are named the "Yeezy Foam Runner" and that Walmart's sale of these shoes is a damaging act that can be punished under California State Law. However, Walmart asserts that they did not make this product and that the issue should be directed to the third party that creates them. In other words Walmart is claiming to be the middleman and thus not the one making these knock off shoes. This would suggest that there is some merit on Yeezy's claims as Walmart is directing blame to another group to avoid the issue falling on themselves. However, they did sell these items and thus are subject to profiting off of the sale of the third party shoes. So the question really boils down to whom the credit for profiting off of a counterfeit good would fall on. Walmart? The third party creator? Or perhaps both?

As for the Google article. This is an international company being placed under litigation over the contents of their news section. Local French news outlets are suing Google over the use of protected news information that they hold access to. However, this would fall under French law prior to their agreement to a new EU law that places such matters up to the EU and thus makes it an international standard in all EU countries that adopt the policy. So what Google does there is subject to the laws of the land and not the laws of the United States. This, in turn, places the proverbial "ball" in France's "court." However, the article does go on to say that Australia also had some changes to its own policy in regards to these tech giants posting news and information that local news had access to. And while Facebook at first refused to pay royalties to the sources of the news, they did eventually cave and ended up paying for such information. This issue is largely for the governments of each nation to decide, meaning that these international corporations must adhere to these laws or withdraw operations in these countries.