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Copyright Case Opinion Summaries

Source: Justia Daily Opinion Summaries (feed)

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Plaintiff sued Amazon, claiming that it permitted third parties to advertise counterfeit copies of books, Vagabond Natural and Vagabond Spiritual, that the plaintiff wrote and self‐published, detailing his experiences as a vagabond homeless man. He says Amazon refused repeated requests to remove the advertisements, although Amazon did eventually remove them. He insists that legitimate sales would have generated “millions of dollars for Amazon” and allowed him “to end homelessness,” but that Amazon “forcefully exploited” his books by counterfeiting them. He claims to have examined copies of each book purchased through Amazon by his cousin and determined that all were unauthorized reproductions because genuine copies would bear his fingernail indentations on the covers. The district judge dismissed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, noting that the books at issue are hard copies, rather than online copies, and are almost certainly Hart’s self‐published books because they are identical to those books. Only six copies were sold by Amazon. There is no plausible allegation that, even if the books sold by Amazon are counterfeits, Amazon was aware of the fact. Counterfeiting cannot be presumed; Hart’s claims did not meet even a minimum standard of plausibility. View “Hart v. Amazon.com, Inc.” on Justia Law

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Plaintiff was a corporation owned by two of the original members of The Turtles, a band most famous for its song “Happy Together.” Plaintiff controlled the master recordings of approximately 100 Turtles songs recorded before 1972. Defendant, the nation’s largest satellite digital radio service, broadcast pre-1972 Turtles songs but did not have licenses with the performers or sound recording copyright-holders and did not pay them for broadcasts. Plaintiff commenced this federal putative class action alleging common-law copyright infringement and unfair competition. The federal district court denied Defendant’s motion for summary judgment, concluding that New York common law includes a right to control public performances of pre-1972 copyrighted sound recordings. The court of appeals certified a question to the Court of Appeals regarding an unresolved issue of New York copyright law. The Court of Appeals answered that New York common-law copyright does not recognize a right of public performance for creators of sound recordings. View “Flo & Eddie, Inc. v Sirius XM Radio, Inc.” on Justia Law

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Plaintiff, the developer of the computer code for the original John Madden Football game for the Apple II computer, filed a diversity action against EA, seeking contract damages in the form of unpaid royalties for Sega Madden and Super Nintendo Madden. The court concluded that the district court properly granted judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) to EA under the “intrinsic test” because the jury had no evidence of Apple II Madden or Sega Madden as a whole to enable it to make a subjective comparison. In this case, plaintiff’s claims rest on the contention that the source code of the Sega Madden games infringed on the source code for Apple II Madden. But, none of the source code was in evidence. The jury therefore could not compare the works to determine substantial similarity. The court rejected plaintiff’s argument that EA’s post-verdict Rule 50(b) motion for JMOL regarding the intrinsic test should not have been considered. The court also concluded that the district court did not err in dismissing the Super Nintendo derivative work claims where the Apple II and Super Nintendo processors have different instruction sizes and data word sizes; the court agreed with the district court that the jury could not have determined plaintiff’s damages from the alleged breach to a reasonable certainty; and even if the district court erred, there was no harm because plaintiff’s failure to introduce any source code precluded a finding that Super Nintendo Madden was a Derivative Work. Finally, the court concluded that the district court correctly dismissed the claim that EA used development aids to create non-derivative works because the claim is unsubstantiated. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View “Antonick v. Electronic Arts, Inc.” on Justia Law

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Plaintiffs filed a copyright infringement suit against MP3tunes and its founder and CEO, alleging that two internet music services created by MP3tunes infringed their copyrights in thousands of sound recordings and musical compositions. The district court granted partial summary judgment to defendants, holding that MP3tunes had a reasonably implemented repeat infringer policy under section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. 512. A jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiffs, but the district court partially overturned the verdict. The court vacated the district court’s grant of partial summary judgment to defendants based on its conclusion that MP3tunes qualified for safe harbor protection under the DMCA because the district court applied too narrow a definition of “repeat infringer”; reversed the district court’s grant of judgment as a matter of law to defendants on claims that MP3tunes permitted infringement of plaintiffs’ copyrights in pre‐2007 MP3s and Beatles songs because there was sufficient evidence to allow a reasonable jury to conclude that MP3tunes had red‐flag knowledge of, or was willfully blind to, infringing activity involving those categories of protected material; remanded for further proceedings related to claims arising out of the district court’s grant of partial summary judgment; and affirmed the judgment in all other respects. View “EMI Christian Music Group, Inc. v. MP3tunes, LLC” on Justia Law

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In this copyright infringement suit, plaintiffs challenged the district court’s determination that defendants’ verbatim use of a portion of Abbott and Costello’s iconic comedy routine, “Who’s on First?,” in the recent Broadway play “Hand to God,” qualified as a non‐infringing fair use. The court concluded that defendants’ entitlement to a fair use defense was not so clearly established on the face of the amended complaint and its incorporated exhibits as to support dismissal. In this case, defendants’ verbatim use of the routine was not transformative, defendants failed persuasively to justify their use of the routine, defendants’ use of some dozen of the routine’s variations of “who’s on first” was excessive in relation to any dramatic purpose, and plaintiffs alleged an active secondary market for the work, which was not considered by the district court. The court concluded, however, that the dismissal is warranted because plaintiffs failed to plausibly plead ownership of a valid copyright. The court found plaintiffs’ efforts to do so on theories of assignment, work‐for‐hire, and merger all fail as a matter of law. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View “TCA Television Corp. v. McCollum” on Justia Law