A Tee, A Tweet And Frank Ocean: Some Copyright Lessons
By Timothy Buckley (August 8, 2017, 5:54 PM EDT) -- During his July 28, 2017, performance at Panorama Music Festival in New York City, Frank Ocean wore a T-shirt that read "Why be racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic when you could just be quiet?" The shirt was produced and sold by 18-year-old Kayla Robinson on her Green Box Shop online store, but the words were reportedly copied without permission from a 2015 tweet posted by another teenager, Brandon Male, via his Twitter handle @avogaydro. Sales of the shirt soared after Ocean's performance, raising questions about attribution and copyright infringement on social media: Who owns the copyright (if any) in the underlying phrase? Would Male be entitled to damages for copyright infringement based on Robinson's use of his tweet without permission? If the contents of the tweet are not copyrightable, could they be protected as a trademark?...
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