Content about ip

Meet the charitable foundation carrying the little-known legacy of 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' (apnews.com)

The ASCAP Foundation, the separate charitable arm for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, was established in 1975 after Norworth’s estate left a bequest of the future licensing payments for baseball’s unofficial anthem and his other hits.

I had no idea. I’ll happily think of this every time I join a seventh-inning-stretch singalong of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. That Wikipedia entry needs to be updated to reflect this tidbit about the song’s royalties, which have ceased since both the original and revised versions were published before 1930 and, therefore, are now in the public domain. I am sort of surprised Norworth’s 1927 revised version didn’t make Duke Law’s list of featured musical compositions entering the public domain in 2023.

Here’s the entry for the original version of the song in the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries for 1908. It’s kind of wild to see that listed as just one of many registrations that year, with no fanfare and no suggestion that it would ultimately become the unofficial anthem of baseball and one of the three most recognizable songs in America. Amazing.

tags: baseball ip music

posted by matt in Saturday, June 14, 2025

The 'Champagne of Beers' gets crushed in Belgium (npr.org)

"We invite our friends in Europe to the U.S. any time to toast the High Life together."

Right decision. And handled well by Molson Coors.

tags: ip beer

posted by matt in Saturday, April 22, 2023

Time to fight back against Big Tech's IP assault | Opinion (newsweek.com)

Former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Michel is still fighting the good fight, now working to open people's eyes to Big Tech's assault on our patent system and to recruit people to the battle. I miss having him his voice on the bench, with his ardent support for the system as a whole. I think his voice is more valuable on the outside these days, though, writing things like this.

tags: patents ip

posted by matt in Monday, October 25, 2021