Second Circuit reverses district court’s fair use declaration granted to Andy Warhol Foundation; artist’s works were not “transformative” and could harm the photographer’s market for licensing her image. Screenprints depicting the late pop star Prince, made by the late artist Andy Warhol in 1984, did not make transformative use of photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s portrait of…
The so-called “conditional irresponsibility” of online content-sharing service providers (OCSSPs) with regards to copyright infringements is a never-ending, vexing, and daunting topic not only for scholars (see here, here, here and here), but also for the European Court of Justice itself (CJEU). The latter has recently rendered its eagerly awaited decision on the joined cases…
Voluntary dismissal of infringement claim did not negate an attorney fee award of over $40,000 for non-infringement counterclaim. An award of attorney fees based on a John Doe defendant’s counterclaim for non-infringement, which was filed in response to infringement claims brought against him by an adult film producer, was affirmed by the U.S. Court of…
“Copyright troll” Design Basics failed to show that copyrighted home designs and allegedly infringing floor plans were “virtually identical.” An infringement suit by Design Basics, LLC, which holds copyrights in thousands of single-family home floor plans and has brought hundreds of infringement suits against homebuilders nationwide, was properly dismissed because Design Basics failed to prove…
In Part 1 of this blog post, we explained the importance of the CJEU judgment in joined cases C-682/18 (YouTube) and C-683/18 (Cyando) for the application of copyright law, even after the introduction of a new copyright liability regime for certain online platforms through Art. 17 DSM Directive. In this part 2, we turn to…
The European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling in joined cases C-682/18 (YouTube) and C-683/18 (Cyando), concerning platform liability for copyright-infringing user uploads under Art. 3 (1) InfoSoc Directive, has been eagerly awaited for a long time. Such a long time – almost a year has passed since the Advocate General opinion (see here) – that…
In February 2019, Tamita Brown, Glen S. Chapman, and Jason T. Chapman (‘plaintiffs’) collectively filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Netflix, Amazon, and Apple (‘defendants’), claiming that the defendants had directly and indirectly infringed their copyright over the song “Fish Sticks n’ Tater Tots” by using it in their documentary titled ‘Burlesque’ (Brown v. Netflix, Inc.)….
An eight-second piece of the song “Fish Sticks n’ Tater Tots” was transformative and reasonably related to the documentary’s purpose of commenting on the resurgence of burlesque dancing. A documentary film’s incorporation of an eight-second excerpt of the children’s song “Fish Sticks n’ Tater Tots” was a noninfringing fair use, the U.S. Court of Appeals…
On 3 June 2021, the CJEU handed down its judgment in CV-Online Latvia v Melons (with Ilešič as a reporting judge), a case involving Melons’ infringement of CV-Online Latvia’s database of job advertisements arguably protected by the sui generis right. The facts of the case are expertly described by Tatiana Synodinou in her comment on the…
In 2019, Artem Stoliarov, a Russian DJ whose stage name is Arty, filed a lawsuit before the US District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that Marshmello’s song ‘Happier’ copied the synthesizer melody from his 2014 remix of OneRepublic’s ‘I Lived’ (OneRepublic is an American pop rock band). Marshmello, an American electronic music…
