The federal district court in New York City correctly dismissed Joel R. McDonald’s amended complaint against musicians and record producers Kanye West, Shawn Carter (“Jay Z”), and others because the defendants’ song “Made in America” was not substantially similar to McDonald’s song with the same title, either in terms of lyrical content or musical structure,…

A federal district court improperly dismissed an enforcement action that a copyright holder had brought against an art editor under California’s Uniform Foreign Court Monetary Judgment Recognition Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled. The copyright holder sought recognition of a French judgment of infringement under the Uniform Recognition Act. Because…

The federal district court in Chicago incorrectly required the painter of a portrait of the leader of the Nation of Islam to prove unauthorized copying, instead of merely copying, for purposes of its copyright infringement claim against the publisher of a newspaper for selling unauthorized copies of his work “Minister Farrakhan Painting,” the U.S. Court…

A Kansas federal court did not err in dismissing fish illustrator Joseph Tomelleri’s copyright infringement suit against MEDL Mobile and Jason Siniscalchi, the developers and marketers of a fishing app called FishID, because Tomelleri failed to show that his injuries arose from MEDL’s Kansas activities, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver has determined. Furthermore,…

A seller of karaoke equipment whose insurance carrier paid over $1 million to music publishers to settle infringement claims over the alleged unlicensed distribution of song recordings, in exchange for dismissal of the claims with prejudice, was not the “prevailing party” for purposes of the Copyright Act’s fee-shifting provision, the U.S. Court of Appeals in…

A magistrate judge properly ruled that a property owner who had intentionally burned a replica of a 16th-century Spanish galleon—a work of art that two plaintiffs had constructed over a used school bus for a Nevada arts festival—did not violate the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has…

A federal district court did not err in ruling that Amazon.com and its founder, Jeff Bezos, did not exceed the scope of their publishing license by failing to pay the full amount of royalties that were allegedly owed to a self-published author, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has ruled (Carlin v. Bezos, May…

Four children of the deceased gospel music composer and publisher Albert Brumley successfully terminated Brumley’s assignment of the copyright to the song “I’ll Fly Away” to their brother, Robert, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has held (Brumley v. Albert E. Brumley & Sons, Inc., May 16, 2016, Sutton, J.). The Copyright Act allowed…