The district court’s rejection of the employee’s qualified immunity arguments on summary judgment was nonappealable. The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans lacked jurisdiction to hear an appeal of a district court’s summary judgment ruling finding that material facts precluded deciding as a matter of law the validity of a qualified immunity defense asserted…
Heirs of “Game of Life” developer failed to overcome work-for-hire doctrine in bid to terminate developer’s original transfer of rights to Hasbro predecessor. The federal district court in Providence, Rhode Island, correctly determined that heirs of toy developer Bill Markham could not reacquire copyrights to the boardgame “The Game of Life” from Hasbro, Inc., and…
Finding that the government edicts doctrine covers legislative works, Court holds that Georgia’s annotations are inherently public domain material because they are authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its official duties. In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the annotations in the Official Code of Georgia…
The Russian citizen’s contacts with Virginia established that he purposefully availed himself of the privilege of conducting business in Virginia. The federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, erred in determining that it lacked personal jurisdiction over a Russian national accused by 12 recording companies of operating two websites that are devoted to “stream ripping” files…
Like the very similar Patent Remedy Act previously invalidated by the Court, the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act failed to abrogate States’ sovereign immunity. Congress lacked the authority to abrogate the States’ immunity from copyright infringement suits through enactment of the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA), a unanimous Supreme Court has held. Writing on…
Factual questions precluded deciding novel legal issues regarding the scope of MMA’s preemption of state-law infringement claims involving pre-1972 sound recordings and whether Pandora qualified for the preemption defense. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has returned a case to the federal district court in Los Angeles to consider in the first instance…
On remand, the district court must apply the Fogerty factors in determining whether the photographer is entitled to an attorney fee award. Given its determination that a media company committed copyright infringement by posting a copyrighted photograph of singer Willie Nelson on a radio station website without including the required Creative Commons attributions, the federal…
The federal district court in Indianapolis, Indiana, did not abuse its discretion by imposing monetary sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 and 28 U.S.C. § 1927 against an attorney who had represented a company accused of publishing an unauthorized copy of photographer Richard Bell’s photograph of the Indianapolis skyline, the U.S. Court of…
The federal district court in Manhattan erred in dismissing copyright infringement claims brought by a group of professional sports photographers against the National Football League (NFL) and its teams, the Associated Press (AP), and Replay Photos, LLC (Replay), the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City has ruled. The photographers—who had granted licenses for…
The federal district court in Portland, Oregon, erred in declining to award attorney fees to a film distributor as the prevailing party in a copyright infringement suit against a BitTorrent peer-to-peer network user who had stipulated to judgment of infringement, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled. The district court abused its…
