Jury instructions not erroneous or prejudicial to plaintiff; court dumps “inverse ratio rule” providing for lower standard of proof of substantial similarity when a high degree of access is shown. After an en banc rehearing, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has affirmed a district court’s judgment after a jury trial in favor…
Because hard drives used in audio recording devices in cars sold by Ford, GM, and Chrysler did not contain “only sounds,” they were not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC)—a nonprofit organization formed to collect and distribute royalties under the Audio Home Recording Act…
The paintings, although temporary, had achieved “recognized stature” as artworks and were protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act. Artists who created “aerosol art” paintings on the exteriors of buildings in the well-known “5Pointz” area of Long Island City, New York, with the consent of the buildings’ owners, were properly granted $6.75 million in statutory…
Hospital infringed on credentialing service’s copyright by using forms, but the infringement began when the forms were not yet registered. A medical credentialing support service is barred from recovering statutory damages and attorney’s fees for a hospital’s use of its credentialing forms after their relationship ended, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit…
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…
Relying on obviously insufficient oversight mechanisms for discovering copyright infringement can constitute willful infringement. A California district court erred when it reduced a $460,800 jury verdict by $109,700 for lack of proof of willful infringement in a copyright infringement suit by Greg Young Publishing, Inc., against online marketplace Zazzle because recklessness can constitute willful infringement,…
Copyright’s underuse hypothesis is simple: that, unless publishers are assured of exclusive rights in older works, they won’t continue to invest in making them available. This of course contradicts a core tenet of classical economic theory, that investors will continue to produce copies of books (or anything else) so long as they can expect to…
The question of whether the plaintiffs’ allegedly infringed lyrics were sufficiently original to be copyright-able was a fact-intensive issue that should not have been determined on the pleadings. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has revived a copyright infringement lawsuit against pop star Taylor Swift and others over song lyrics allegedly copied and…
Whether the parties to an agreement had intended to transfer the copyrights as part of its overall transfer of intellectual property was a question of material fact that should not have been decided by the court on summary judgment. An agreement between two affiliated companies did not unambiguously prohibit the transfer of copyrights as part…
Exceptions to hearsay rule did not apply to songwriters’ evidence of copying against members of rock band who allegedly copied the songwriters’ bass riff when creating the band’s own song. Two songwriters who authored the song “Ain’t That a Lot of Love” failed to provide admissible evidence of direct copying or substantial similarity to survive…
