Fast Company reports that the company that maintains the Eiffel Tower holds a copyright in its nighttime lighting display, and thereby polices commercial use of (nighttime) photographs of the Tower (unlike the image of the Tower itself, the lighting display has not fallen into the public domain).
One photographer’s solution depicted here.
UPDATE: Great minds inspired
From the Abstract from Bartow, The Hegemony of Copyright Treatises, University of Cincinnati Law Review, Vol. 73, pp.1-64, Fall 2004
This Article asserts that major conceptions about the appropriate structure, texture, and span of copyright protections and privileges have been fashioned by copyright treatises, particularly the various editions of Nimmer on Copyright. Copyright treatises function
Not Trademark Law but you will not be worse off for reading these notes from a meeting with Warren Buffett.
This NY Times article discusses product placement in movies, including the exchange from Million Dollar Baby about bleach being bleach, a discussion prompted no doubt by this 1967 Supreme Court decision ordering Procter & Gamble to divest itself of the then recently-acquired Clorox Company.
Others brands in recent movies include the Sanford Winery and Hai Karate
Model does two hour photo shoot in 1986. Nestle doesn’t tell him that it put the picture on the TASTER’S CHOICE jar. He sees the jar for the first time in 2002. Sues. Gets awarded $15.6 million dollars.
Update: Scott Whiteleather writes ” . . . it is interesting to see an award like