Copyright in the US starts at the moment of creation. I don't know if this is further defined anywhere. At the very least it means when a work is first completed. Publication is irrelevant.

And today is the day my mod points expire :p XD

Also known as the Batman exception.

If the cops in NJ were all high, things would be a lot more relaxed on the turnpike.

Cheney picked himself.

Where are my mod points when I really need them? :D

Nylon is called NYlon because it was debuted at the N.Y. World's Fair.

ReplayTV DVRs had a pretty good auto-commercial-skip function for a time. They were sued. They eliminated the function. No DVR company is going to implement such a function in the future.

Fair use doesn't apply here. If a band plays a cover song live, the venue is responsible for having paid a license fee to ASCAP or BMI or whomever. If the band records and distributes recordings of a cover song, they are responsible for paying a license fee, usually to the Harry Fox Agency which almost exclusively handles publishing royalties for cover recordings. The band doesn't get sued because it's in the songwriter's financial interests to have as many different people as possible play and record the song, because he or she gets a cut each time. At least that's how it's supposed to work.

Nudity is not required for an image to be deemed 'explicitly sexual' under Federal regulations.

But he didn't run straight to lawyers.

Teller apparently registered copyright in 1983. Therefore it must be fixed in some form. Your argument is moot.

The process would have been, the guy asks for Teller's permission. Maybe Teller grants it, maybe he doesn't. Maybe he sells a license to the guy. Same as with any other theatrical performance. But selling the trick to other people is akin to putting your name on the script to a recent play, running off copies and it and selling them.

Wait, he did patent it? Well then the method is his, he owns it, case closed. Whether you can read the patent, build the equipment in your garage, and perform it in your backyard is immaterial. Mass-producing it and selling it is patent infringement.

Going after the guy for copyright infringement is icing on the cake. And that depends on whether Teller published it with a copyright symbol on it, or registered it with the copyright office, way back when. (Since 1989 registration hasn't been necessary.) It's possible a situation exists where the routine is in the public domain, but the method of achieving the illusion is patent protected. All Dogge needed to do in that case was figure out a *different* way of doing the trick... which is, ironically, most of Penn & Teller's act.

"Prior art" is patent law, not copyright law. Copyright law relies on proof of prior existence, but I don't know if there's a like term to prior art.

IMO he'd have a better case if he'd patented the trick; then he'd be an automatic winner if Dogge's version uses the same method. I think. On the other hand, there's a (probably weak) case to be made that Teller's copyright covers all methods of creating that same illusion.