The dismissal of a copyright infringement plaintiff’s claims against music publisher Sony Corporation of America and other related defendants pursuant to a mandatory arbitration provision in the agreement that the plaintiff had signed upon entering Sony’s songwriting contest did not warrant an award of attorney fees to Sony as a prevailing party under the Copyright Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston has decided. An award of attorney fees under the Copyright Act required a material alteration of the parties’ relationship, and the mere sending of the plaintiff’s claims to arbitration did not suffice (Cortes-Ramos v. Sony Corp. of America, May 4, 2018, Barron, D.).
Case date: 04 May 2018
Case number: No. 16-2441
Court: United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
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