Podcast - FTC Commissioner Dismissals: Background and Implications
The Briefing – Late Night, Early Dismissal: The Santos-Kimmel Copyright Case
(Podcast) The Briefing – Late Night, Early Dismissal: The Santos-Kimmel Copyright Case
Fifth Circuit Affirms District Court’s Striking of Class Allegations
Eighth Circuit Reverses Dismissal of Putative Class Claims
Nota Bene Episode 98: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Mark on U.S. Antitrust Law for 2020 with Thomas Dillickrath and Bevin Newman
Class Action Suit Against Instagram for New Terms of Service Dismissed
District court dismisses claim for copyright infringement against writers, producers and distributors of television show Yellowjackets, holding no substantial similarity between protectable elements of Yellowjackets and...more
In a strategic move to preserve their right to seek reconsideration of previously dismissed DMCA § 1202(b) claims, the plaintiffs in Andersen v. Stability AI have voluntarily dismissed with prejudice all DMCA claims. The...more
We have previously reported on the Jobiak case which raises the interesting issue of whether an AI-scraped job database is subject to copyright protection and is infringed. We were hoping that the court would make substantive...more
In the latest development of a complicated eight-year court battle regarding a copyright infringement claim, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated and remanded the district court’s dismissal on claim...more
We recently posted about the Jobiak case which raises the interesting question of whether scraping an AI-generated database of job listings constitutes copyright infringement (among other claims). Plaintiff has submitted its...more
Addressing a state law-based challenge to the way search results are displayed on copies of websites, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that copyright preemption precluded a website owner from invoking state...more
Stepping on Toes: The Fortnite Legal Dance Battle Victory Royale? - Not quite. In a recent opinion, the Ninth Circuit held that Fortnite’s developer Epic Games might be liable for infringing a well-known choreographer’s...more
Court Grants Motion To Dismiss in Kadrey AI Training Data Case - In a short but sharply worded decision, a California district court on November 20, 2023, granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss in Kadrey v. Meta...more
In a rare ruling on infringement of a copyright on choreography, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the dismissal of a copyright infringement action, holding that the district court erred in its...more
Addressing the elements of contributory copyright infringement, the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit found that a plaintiff had plausibly alleged contributory copyright infringement when he alleged that the...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that a photo- and video-sharing social networking service could not be liable for secondary copyright infringement because embedding a photo does not “display a copy” of the...more
What additional value does a copyright registration confer on a run-of-the-mill neighborhood social media post? Not a lot, it appears. Earlier this year, the First Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit that sought a declaratory judgment on the basis that a notice of termination of copyright assignment under 17 U.S.C. § 203 did not validly...more
The US Copyright Office Review Board (“Board”) rejected a request to register a computer-generated image of a landscape for copyright protection, explaining that a work must be created by a human being to obtain a copyright....more
The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed dismissal of a copyright infringement claim for failure to register the copyright, and affirmed summary judgment against plaintiff on related state law claims where the...more
Presented with a publishing company defendant’s mashup of Dr. Seuss’ copyrighted works with Star Trek in a work titled Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go!, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit tackled claims of both...more
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit preserved discovery options for copyright owners fighting online piracy when it reversed the district court’s refusal to allow a subpoena of an alleged online...more
In a wide ranging opinion, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that copying unimportant database schema from a proprietary database did not constitute infringement. The Court also held that where the...more
In a recent decision from the Second Circuit, Judges Parker, Chin, and Carney side-stepped a novel question: whether human skin can be the kind of "tangible medium of expression" required for copyright protection. Instead,...more
The Second Circuit has upheld the dismissal of a copyright suit against Jerry Seinfeld that alleged he stole the concept for his hit show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee....more
A recent decision of the Southern District of New York shields digital publishers from copyright infringement when embedding public Instagram posts in news pieces posted online. In the case, Stephanie Sinclair, a...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated the district court’s dismissal of trademark and false advertising claims and grant of summary judgment on a copyright claim. Evoqua Water Technologies, LLC v. M.W....more
The Ninth Circuit recently reversed the dismissal of copyright infringement claims in Hall v. Taylor Swift finding a lack of sufficient facts or evidence of record to justify a summary conclusion of lack of originality for...more
It is no secret about the proliferation of copyright lawsuits that have been filed over the past four years over the unauthorized use of photos online, many against media companies that seek to shield themselves from...more
The Supreme Court recently dismissed an appeal by Nestlé, the Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate, and its subsidiary corporation Nespresso, filed against our client, the Israeli company Expresso Club....more