Another court of appeals concludes that the statute of limitations doctrine was not overturned by a Supreme Court laches decision. The Supreme Court did not upend the longstanding discovery rule applicable to Copyright Act cases by merely mentioning in passing that a copyright claim accrues “when an infringing act occurs,” the U.S. Court of Appeals…
The limitation might have failed in an earlier period, but more recent precedents were more forgiving. Parties to a photo image license were free to contract for a two-year statute of limitations under California law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has held. The court, in an unpublished opinion, also affirmed a…
Because such relief was not specified in the Act, a demand for such relief required service of an amended complaint upon a defaulting defendant. A plaintiff who prevailed in a copyright infringement lawsuit against a defaulting defendant was required to serve an amended complaint upon that defendant if the amended complaint newly sought to hold…
Although the company’s description of each individual skill may not have been copyrightable, its selection and arrangement of those skills merited protection. A federal district court properly found that a table of workplace skills developed for use in a career-readiness assessment program was protectable under the Copyright Act because it reflected creativity in the selection…
The court of appeals reverses the district court for the second time in a case that has been pending since 2014. A Vietnamese company that makes accessible within the United States a website and a downloadable app that enable the exchange of unlicensed music files can be sued in a California federal court, the U.S….
The digital codes were created for functional purposes and were put together under purely mechanical rules. The digital codes sent by a pyrotechnics control system were not entitled to protection under the Copyright Act because they were no more than “an inevitable system dictated by the logic” of the setup, the U.S. Court of Appeals…
A defamation claim, too, was precluded by the Communications Decency Act. A federal district court in Boston correctly found that the manager of a neighborhood forum could not expose himself to defamation and copyright infringement claims by merely migrating the forum from one web platform to another, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First…
Because the artists who would form part of the class had entered into licensing agreements with varying terms, individual issues would prevail over common questions. A district court improperly certified a class of songwriters and artists whose allegedly unlicensed performances can be downloaded and listened to from a popular music memorabilia website, the U.S. Court…
Although the author worked under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement when he penned the movie, the right to ownership was governed by copyright law and not labor law. The writer of the screenplay for Friday the 13th, the classic summer camp thriller that spawned a generation of equally campy horror films, was entitled to…
Although the contract between a makeup artist and her publisher described the artist as the author of the book, the dispute still arose under the Copyright Act because “author” is a term defined under the Act. The dispute between a makeup artist and her publisher over ownership of the copyright to a makeup guide raised…
