17 U.S.C. §412 precluded developer of honey harvesting aid from seeking statutory damages for mail-order seller’s copying of advertising text in catalogue. The suit by the developer of a honey harvesting aid used by beekeepers alleging that a mail-order business infringed his copyright in advertising copy for the device was properly dismissed because the first…
Summary The judgment in PRS v Qatar Airways [2020] EWHC 1872 considers an interesting jurisdiction challenge in the context of international air travel. In December 2019, PRS issued a claim in the UK against Qatar Airways (QA) for a declaration that QA infringed the worldwide performing rights in its musical works, an injunction to prevent…
On 24 April 2020, the Federal Court of Australia handed down a decision in the case Boomerang Investments Pty Ltd v Padgett (Liability) [2020] FCA 535 which concerned the copying of substantial parts of the iconic Australian pop-hit classic ‘Love is in the air’ by the US band, Glass Candy, and by the French airline…
District court properly dismissed claims by United States pizza chain, finding no infringing acts in the United States. Neither the Copyright Act nor the Lanham Act apply extraterritorially to claims by a United States pizza chain against a pizzeria in Edinburgh, Scotland, which allegedly copied the architectural design, and the look and feel of the…
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…
Blocking injunctions against internet service providers (ISPs) remain one of the most interesting and litigated issues of contemporary copyright law. Though the concept of blocking injunctions per se is firmly established on the basis of CJEU case law (C‑324/09 L’Oréal, C-70/10 Scarlet Extended, C-360/10 Sabam and the seminal C-314/12 UPC Telekabel), blocking injunction jurisprudence in…
As yet, no federal appeals court has addressed whether a human body part may qualify as a tangible medium of expression for copyright purposes, but this one came close. In a suit in which a makeup artist’s state law claims against a photographer and a makeup manufacturer were dismissed as preempted by the Copyright Act,…
In addition to the low likelihood of success on the merits, the threat of imminent harm was eliminated, given that the Christmas show that Enchant sought to stop had already come and gone. The denial of a preliminary injunction by a Nashville federal court in a copyright infringement case involving holiday animal sculptures on the…
This case concerned the famous Brompton bicycle which can be folded to carry away after use (Case C‑833/18, SI, Brompton Bicycle Ltd. v. Chedech / Get2Get); the author commented on the Advocate General’s opinion here and here. The bike was once protected by a patent and, following its expiry, the defendant (Get2Get) started selling a…
Register’s opinion needed to determine validity of textile designer’s “single-unit registration” for 31 separate designs that were not released at the same time. In a case in which textile designer Unicolors, Inc., obtained a jury verdict against retailer H&M for copyright infringement involving designs printed on garments, the Ninth Circuit has reversed and remanded, ordering…
