Home > Copyright Case Opinion Summaries

Copyright Case Opinion Summaries
  • Golan v. Holder
    Petitioners are orchestra conductors, musicians, publishers, and others who formerly enjoyed free access to literary and artistic works section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), 17 U.S.C. 104A, 109(a), removed from the public domain. Petitioners maintained that Congress, in passing section 514, exceeded its authority under the Constitution's Copyright and Patent Clause and violated the First Amendment rights of anyone who previously had access to such works. The Tenth Circuit ruled that section 514 was narrowly tailored to fit the important government aim of protecting U.S. copyright holders' interests abroad. In accord with the judgment of the Tenth Circuit, the Court concluded that section 514 did not transgress constitutional limitations on Congress' authority. The Court held that neither the text of the Copyright and Patent Clause, historical practice, or the Court's precedent excluded application of copyright protection to works in the public domain. The Court also held that nothing in the historical record, subsequent congressional practice, or the Court's jurisprudence warranted exceptional First Amendment solicitude for copyrighted works that were once in the public domain.
    Posted: January 18, 2012
  • UMG Recordings, Inc., et al. v. Shelter Capital Partners LLC, et al.
    UMG filed suit against Veoh for direct and secondary copyright infringement where users of Veoh's service have in the past been able, without UMG's authorization, to download videos containing songs for which UMG owned a copyright. The district court granted summary judgment to Veoh after determining that it was protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. 512(c), "safe harbor" limiting service providers' liability for "infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider." The court affirmed the district court's determination on summary judgment that Veoh was entitled to section 512(c) safe harbor protection where Veoh met all the section 512(c) requirements. The district court also affirmed the district court's dismissal of the claims of secondary liability against the Investor Defendants. The court further affirmed the district court's determination that, in this case, attorney's fees could not be awarded under Rule 68. The court remanded for the district court to consider in the first instance whether Veoh was entitled to Rule 68 costs excluding attorney's fees.
    Posted: December 20, 2011
  • Dassault Systemes, SA v. Childress
    For about 15 years, defendant owned and operated a business that trained individuals to use the computer-aided design program CATIA, which was developed by plaintiff. Plaintiff owns the copyrights for CATIA software products and has registered the CATIA trademark with the USPTO. Plaintiff sought damages for copyright and trademark infringement, unfair competition, and Michigan Consumer Protection Act violations arising from allegedly unauthorized use of its name and software licenses to operate a for-profit training course. The district court ruled in favor of plaintiff. The Sixth Circuit reversed the district court's refusal to set aside default judgment against defendant, who was pro se, and likely confused rather than engaging in a strategy of delay and who raised a plausible defense. The court upheld the court's grant of plaintiff’s motion for leave to subpoena the FBI, which had seized defendant's computers; the information sought was not protected grand jury information.
    Posted: December 13, 2011
  • Steward Software Co. v. Kopcho
    The issue before the Supreme Court was whether a claim under Colorado law for civil theft of a copyrightable work required a trial court to instruct the jury on principles of federal copyright law. Petitioner Steward Software hired Respondent Richard Kopcho to develop and market a new software program. Steward never entered into a written agreement governing the ownership of the software with Holonyx, Inc. (one of Respondent's multiple corporate entities) or Respondent. By the time the software was ready for testing, the relationship between the parties had become strained. Steward refused to make further payments and under Respondent's direction, Holonyx locked Steward out of the software code and refused to turn it over. Holonyx then filed a copyright registration for the software with the U.S. Copyright Office, listing the software's author a new corporation Respondent controlled called Ruffdogs Software, Inc. Steward sued Respondent for breach of contract and civil theft. Before trial, the parties tendered proposed jury instructions; one of Steward's proposed instructions pertained to the ownership and registration of copyrightable works. The trial court determined that copyright law did not pertain to Steward's civil theft claim and rejected the tendered instruction. Upon review, the Supreme Court agreed that ownership of the copyright in the code was irrelevant. The Court thus concluded the trial court correctly refused to instruct the jury on the principles of copyright law. The court reversed the appellate court and reinstated the trial court's opinion.
    Posted: December 13, 2011
  • Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp.
    Apple brought this action against Psystar for copyright infringement because Psystar was using Apple's software on Psystar computers. The district court held that Psystar was infringing Apple's federally registered copyrights in its operating software, Mac OS X, because Psystar was copying the software for use in Psystar's computers. Psystar subsequently appealed the district court's rejection of Psystar's copyright misuse defense, the district court's order enjoining Psystar's continuing infringement, and the district court's grant of Apple's motions to seal documents on grounds of maintaining confidentiality. The court held that Psystar's misuse defense failed because it was an attempt to apply the first sale doctrine to a valid licensing agreement. The court affirmed the district court's order enjoining Psystar's continuing infringement and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. 1203(b)(1), violations and held that the district court properly applied the Supreme Court's four eBay Inc. v MercExchange, L.L.C. factors. The court held, however, that there was no adequate basis on the record to support the sealing of any Apple records on grounds of confidentiality and applied the presumption in favor of access, vacating the district court's sealing orders.
    Posted: September 28, 2011
  • Severe Records, LLC, v. Rich
    Pleased with the results of their first collaboration, the author and musician co-authored and recorded a second song. The relationship collapsed and the musician signed as a recording artist with unrelated recording and management companies. Accusations and altercations followed, and the author filed suit, alleging a "novel" claim of copyright infringement against the musician and others for preventing the author from commercially exploiting the two songs through threats contained in cease-and-desist letters and requests to music retailers that the songs not be offered for sale. The district court dismissed for failure to state a claim of copyright infringement. The Sixth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the copyright infringement claim, but reversed dismissal of a declaratory judgment claim. The author's allegation that the musician transferred an interest in the first song, which she did not own, is not the same thing as creating an improper copy of the song and such transfer does not constitute infringement under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 106. The cease-and-desist letters on which the declaratory judgment action was based essentially challenge the authorship and ownership of the songs, implicating federal law, so its dismissal as a state law claim was improper.
    Posted: September 23, 2011
  • GoPets Ltd. v. Hise, et al.
    This case was brought pursuant to the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), 15 U.S.C. 1125(d)(1) over the registered domain name "gopets.com." The main issue on appeal was whether the term "registration" applied only to the initial registration of the domain name, or whether it also applied to a re-registration of a currently registered domain name by a new registrant. The court concluded that such re-registration was not a "registration" within the meaning of section 1125(d)(1). Therefore, the court held that, because Edward Hise registered gopets.com in 1999, long before GoPets Ltd. registered its service mark, Digital Overture's re-registration and continued ownership of gopets.com did not violate section 1125(d)(1). The court held, however, that the Hises violated the ACPA in registering the additional domains because the Hises acted in bad faith and the court affirmed the district court's award for each of those registrations. The court also affirmed the district court's conclusion that the Hises' use of gopets.com violated the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1051 et seq., and remanded for determination of any relief that the district court might find appropriate for that violation. The court finally vacated the district court's award of attorney's fees and remanded for reconsideration by the district court.
    Posted: September 22, 2011
  • United Statesl v. Tenenbaum
    Recording companies sought statutory damages and injunctive relief under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 101, claiming willful infringement of copyrights of music recordings by using file-sharing software to download and distribute recordings without authorization. The jury found that the infringement was willful and awarded statutory damages of $22,500 for each infringed recording, an award within the statutory range of $750 to $150,000 per infringement. The judge reduced the damages by a factor of ten, reasoning that the award was excessive in violation of defendant's due process rights. The First Circuit affirmed the finding of liability, but reinstated the original damage award. The district court erred in considering the constitutional issue without first addressing defendant's motion for remittitur. The court noted a number of issues concerning application of the Copyright Act that "Congress may wish to examine."
    Posted: September 16, 2011
  • Airframe Sys., Inc. v. L-3 Commc'n Corp.
    In 1979, plaintiff began developing proprietary aircraft maintenance tracking software; it has continually modified the source code for the software. Source code is the original version of a computer program that is written in human-readable words and symbols and must be compiled into machine-readable object code before a computer can read and execute the software. A program in source code format can be modified by a programmer, whereas a program in object code format cannot be easily modified. Plaintiff began licensing the software to defendant in 1986, limited to use in object code format, and registered four versions of the source code with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2003. After discovering unlicensed versions on defendant's computers, plaintiff brought an infringement action. The district court entered summary judgment for defendant. The First Circuit affirmed. Plaintiff, by comparing what was found on defendant's computers to the 2009 version of its source code, did not produce sufficient evidence of "substantial similarity" between the copyrighted material and the allegedly infringing material.
    Posted: September 14, 2011
  • Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. v. Akanoc Solutions, Inc., et al.
    Louis Vuitton sued Managed Solutions Group, Inc. (MSG), Akanoc Solutions, Inc., and Steven Chen (collectively, Defendants) for contributory copyright and trademark infringement, contending that Defendants were liable for their role in hosting websites that directly infringed Louis Vuitton's trademarks and copyrights. After trial, a jury found Defendants liable and awarded damages against each defendant. In response to Defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law, the district court set aside the jury's verdict and award against MSG. The district court otherwise denied the motion. The court affirmed the district court on all issues of liability raised by the appeal and cross-appeal but vacated the judgment and remanded with instructions that the district court award statutory damages in the amount of $10,500,000 for contributory trademark infringement and $300,000 for contributory copyright infringement, for which Akanoc and Chen should be jointly and severally liable. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded.
    Posted: September 12, 2011
  • Edgenet, Inc. v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.,
    In 2004 HD contracted with plaintiff, to develop an inventory classification system, called a taxonomy,for HD’s database. Plaintiff would own the intellectual-property rights and would license HD to use it at no-cost as long as plaintiff remained HD's data-pool vendor and HD continued paying for services. In 2008 HD began to develop an in-house database, incorporating the taxonomy that plaintiff had created. Plaintiff learned of the plan and registered a copyright. HD sent notice terminating the relationship, with a check for $100,000 to purchase a perpetual license, pursuant to the contract. HD notified suppliers to transmit their product data to its in-house system rather than to plaintiff, which returned the check and filed suit. The district judge dismissed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, concluding that HD did not violate copyright law and that the case did not belong in federal court. HD acted in accordance with its contract rights.
    Posted: September 2, 2011
  • Curet-Velazquez v. ACEMLA De Puerto Rico, Inc.
    The heirs of a composer, who died in 2003, sued a music publisher and a performance rights society, with which the composer had contracted in 1995 with respect to four songs. The defendants failed to supply royalty reports as required by the contracts. The district court award the maximum statutory damages for the copyright infringements pursuant to 17 U.S.C. 504(c)(1). The First Circuit affirmed, rejecting many of the defendants' arguments as not properly raised and, therefore, waived.
    Posted: August 29, 2011
  • Flexible Lifeline Systems, Inc. v. Precision Lift, Inc., et al.
    Defendants appealed from the district court's grant of a preliminary injunction against them in an action for copyright infringement by plaintiff. The district court found that plaintiff was likely to succeed in its infringement suit and granted the injunction relying on the long-standing precedent of this circuit that presumed irreparable harm in copyright infringement cases upon a showing of likelihood of success on the merits. The court held that, in light of eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. and Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., this circuit's long-standing practice of presuming irreparable harm upon the showing of a likelihood of success on the merits in a copyright infringement case was no longer good law. Accordingly, the court held that even in a copyright infringement case, the plaintiff must demonstrate a likelihood of irreparable harm as a prerequisite for injunctive relief, whether preliminary or permanent. Accordingly, the court vacated the preliminary injunction and remanded for further proceedings.
    Posted: August 22, 2011
  • Fleischer Studios, Inc. v. A.V.E.L.A., Inc., et al.
    This appeal stemmed from the district court's summary judgment dismissing Fleischer Studios, Inc.'s (Fleischer) copyright and trademark infringement action where the district court ruled that Fleischer held neither a valid copyright nor a valid trademark in the Betty Boop cartoon character and therefore lacked standing to sue. The court held that because the chain of title was broken, the district court properly dismissed Fleischer's copyright infringement claim. The court vacated and remanded to the district court for further proceedings on Fleischer's trademark infringmenet claims regarding the Betty Boop word mark because it was unable to ascertain a legal basis for the district court's reasoning on the current record.
    Posted: August 19, 2011
  • In re Literary Works in Elec. Databases Litig.
    Plaintiffs in this consolidated class action allege copyright infringements arising from defendant publishers' unauthorized electronic reproduction of plaintiff authors' written works. The district court certified a class for settlement purposes and approved a settlement agreement over the objection of ten class members (objectors). In this appeal, objectors challenged the propriety of the settlement's release provision, the certification of the class, and the process by which the district court reached its decisions. Although the court rejected the objectors' arguments regarding the release, the court concluded that the district court abused its discretion in certifying the class and approving the settlement because the named plaintiffs failed to adequately represent the interest of all class members. The court did not reach the procedural challenges, which were moot in light of the court's class certification holding. Therefore, the court vacated the district court's order and remanded for further proceedings.
    Posted: August 17, 2011
  • John Wiley & Sons, Inc. v. Kirtsaeng
    Plaintiff sued defendant, claiming, among other things, copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. 501, trademark infringement under 15 U.S.C. 1114(a), and unfair competition under New York state law. At issue was whether the first sale doctrine, 17 U.S.C. 109(a), applied to copyrighted workers produced outside the United States but imported and resold in the United States. The court held that the first sale doctrine did not apply to works manufactured outside of the United States; the district court did not err in declining to instruct the jury regarding the unsettled state of the first sale doctrine; and the district court did not err in admitting evidence of defendant's gross revenues. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.
    Posted: August 15, 2011
  • Mavrix Photo, Inc. v. Brand Technologies, Inc., et al.
    Mavrix Photo, Inc. (Mavrix), a Florida Corporation with its principal place of business in Miami, sued Brand Technologies, Inc., an Ohio corporation with its principal place of business in Toledo, and its CEO (collectively, Brand), in federal district court for the Central District of California, alleging that Brand infringed Mavrix's copyright by posting its copyrighted photos on its website. Brand moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdictional and the district court denied Mavrix's motion for jurisdictional discovery and granted Brand's motion to dismiss. The court reversed and held that Brand was not subject to general personal jurisdiction in California, but that its contacts with California were sufficiently related to the dispute in this case that it was subject to specific personal jurisdiction.
    Posted: August 8, 2011
  • Nova Design Build, Inc. v. Modi
    In negotiations for architectural services for construction of a hotel, the parties agreed that defendant would pay an additional $15,000, apart from design fees, if defendant elected not to use plaintiff's construction affiliate. The agreement stipulated that architectural designs would remain plaintiff's intellectual property. Defendant did not use plaintiff's construction affiliate and the relationship deteriorated. Plaintiff claimed that it had no further design obligations; defendant refused to pay what $28,000 demanded by plaintiff. Plaintiff accepted an $18,000 payment in satisfaction, but registered a copyright for designs that it had produced and filed copyright infringement claims against defendant. The district court ruled in favor of defendant, holding that plaintiff had not complied with registration requirements (17 U.S.C. 408(b)) when it submitted re-created designs because its office had been robbed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Plaintiff did not identify anything in the designs that was original and protectable; the designs were, for the most part, based on the Holiday Inn Express prototype.
    Posted: July 26, 2011
  • Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., et al. v. X One X Productions, et al.
    Appellants (AVELA) appealed a permanent injunction prohibiting them from licensing certain images extracted from publicity materials for the films "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz," as well as several animated short films featuring the cat-mouse duo "Tom & Jerry." At issue was whether the district court properly issued the permanent injunction after granting summary judgment in favor of appellee (Warner Bros.) on their claim that the extracted images infringed copyrights for the films. The court affirmed in large part the district court's grant of summary judgment to Warner Bros. on the issue of copyright infringement and the resulting permanent injunction. The court reversed with respect to one category of AVELA products, and vacated in corresponding part the permanent injunction entered by the district court. The court remanded for modification of the permanent injunction and further proceedings with the opinion.
    Posted: July 5, 2011
  • Spooner v. EEN, INC.
    In a suit under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 106, described by the court as the equivalent of hand-to-hand combat, the plaintiff settled with some defendants for $30,000. After trial plaintiff obtained injunctive relief and statutory damages in the amount of $40,000 against others, offset by the $30,000 settlement. The court awarded $98,745 in attorney fees; a motion for costs, initially denied, remained pending. The First Circuit affirmed, first noting that the district court had cured a jurisdictional defect by awarding $3,413.05 in costs. The district court correctly applied the lodestar method. Although the fees exceed the award, the violation was willful and the injunctive relief may be worth more that the award of damages. While a rejected Rule 68 offer, not improved upon at trial, obligates the plaintiff to pay the defense costs incurred subsequent to the rejection the offer plaintiff made before trial was not a Rule 68 offer.
    Posted: July 5, 2011
  • Barclays Capital Inc., et al. v. Theflyonthewall.com, Inc.
    After a bench trial, the district court entered a judgment for plaintiffs concluding that on seventeen occasions, defendant had infringed plaintiffs' copyrights in their research reports, and that by collecting and disseminating to its own subscribers the summary recommendations with respect to securities trading contained in plaintiffs' reports, defendant had committed the New York state law tort of "hot news" misappropriation. Defendant appealed the judgment and injunction against it on the "hot news" misappropriation claim. The court held that plaintiffs' claim against defendant for "hot news" misappropriation of the plaintiff financial firms' recommendations to clients and prospective clients as to trading in corporate securities was preempted by federal copyright law. Based upon principles explained and applied in National Basketball Association v. Motorola ("NBA"), the court held that because plaintiffs' claim fell within the "general scope" of copyright, 17 U.S.C. 106, and involved the type of works protected by the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 102 and 103, and because defendant's acts at issue did not meet the exceptions for a "hot news" misappropriation claim as recognized by NBA, the claim was preempted. Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment of the district court with respect to that claim.
    Posted: June 20, 2011
  • Murphy v. Millennium Radio Grp
    In 2006 the photographer took a picture of radio personalities for use in a magazine. An employee of the radio station scanned the picture, cutting off credit lines, and posted it on the internet. After the photographer's attorney contacted the station, the personalities made disparaging remarks about the photographer on the air. The photographer alleged violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 1201, the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 101, and defamation under New Jersey law. The district court entered summary judgment in favor of the defendants. The Sixth Circuit reversed. A cause of action under the DMCA may arise whenever the types of information listed in the statute and conveyed in connection with copies of a work, including in digital form, is falsified or removed, regardless of the form in which that information is conveyed. The fact that the photographer's name appeared in a printed gutter credit near the image rather than in an "automated copyright protection or management system" does not remove it from the protection of the Act. The trial court erred in finding "fair use" in the station's commercial use of a commercial photographer's copyrighted image. The photographer was given inadequate opportunity for discovery on the defamation claim.
    Posted: June 14, 2011
  • TMTV Corp. v. Mass Prod., Inc.
    The star of a television show left his position with the plaintiff television station for a different television station, where he worked on a television show with the same characters and setting as a show he had worked on for plaintiff. The district court entered summary judgment in favor of plaintiff in a copyright infringement action against the actor. The plaintiff settled with the second television station. The First Circuit affirmed. Even if the actor suggested some of the scripts and characters in the original show, they were not "fixed" as required for protection under 17 U.S.C. 102(a); the scripts, as work-for-hire, belonged to the plaintiff. The shows are strikingly similar. The $700,000 settlement with the television station did not release the actor, but the district court correctly offset damages by the amount of the settlement.
    Posted: June 13, 2011
  • Ho v. Taflove
    One defendant was a research assistant for one of the plaintiffs, an engineering professor, when the professor developed a mathematical model of how electrons behave under certain circumstances. The assistant switched to a different research group without returning a notebook. The plaintiff-professor retained a new assistant, who continued the work and shared some of her material with the defendant. The defendants submitted a symposium paper and an article, describing the model and its applications. The district court rejected copyright claims and state law claims. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding that the materials were not protected by the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 102(b) because the model is an idea. The Act protects the expression of ideas, but exempts the ideas themselves from protection; the equation, figures and text are the only ways to express this idea, and, under the merger doctrine, these expressions are not copyrightable. Because state law conversion and fraud claims were the equivalent to assertions under the Act, those claims are preempted. A claim of trade secret misappropriation could not survive on the merits.
    Posted: June 6, 2011
  • Johnson v. Cypress Hill
    In 1993 a hip-hop group released a track that contains a segment of plaintiff's 1969 song. The district court dismissed plaintiff's 2003 copyright suit. Under the Copyright Act, sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972 are not subject to copyright protection, but may be protected by state law (17 U.S.C. 301(c)). The court denied a motion to amend and awarded $321,995.25 in attorney's fees and $10,620.53 in costs. A new claim, filed in state court, was removed to federal court and dismissed as res judicata. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The trial court correctly denied the motion to amend, based on the undue delay between the plaintiff's notice of the defects in his claim and the motion. The fact that the material was not under copyright did not deprive the court of jurisdiction and the second complaint was properly dismissed.
    Posted: June 1, 2011
  • William A Graham Co v. Thomas Haughey, et al
    In 1991 defendant left his job with an insurance brokerage for one with competitor and took two binders of print material for use by the competitor. After discovering the infringement, the employer filed suit in 2005 under 17 U.S.C. 101. There were no actual damages; the court awarded $16,561,230 from the competitor and $2,297,397 from the employee, representing about 70 percent of the competitor's profits, and 75 percent of the employee's commissions. On remand, the district court found that the award was not excessive and awarded interest: $4,112,859 against the competitor and $570,542 against the employee. The Third Circuit affirmed. The amount does not "shock the conscience" and, although the statute does not refer to pre-judgment interest, the award is consistent with the Copyright Act. The court rejected an argument that interest should be calculated from the time the infringement was discovered. The date of a claim's accrual is not changed by tolling of the limitations period.
    Posted: May 16, 2011
  • Penguin Group (USA) Inc., v. American Buddha
    Plaintiff, Penguin Group (USA) Inc. ("Penguin"), filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against defendant, an Oregon not-for-profit corporation with its principal place of business in Arizona, alleging that defendant's posting of four Penguin books on the Internet violated Penguin's copyrights in works that it had published. In answer to a question the court certified to the New York Court of Appeals, that court concluded that "[in] copyright infringement cases involving the uploading of a copyrighted printed literary work onto the Internet, ... the situs of injury for purposes of determining long-arm jurisdiction under [the relevant section of New York's long-arm-jurisdiction statute is] ... the location of the copyright holder." Accordingly, the court held that the Court of Appeals' decision compelled it to conclude, for purposes of the personal jurisdiction analysis pursuant to New York's long-arm statute, that the situs of Penguin's alleged injury was New York. Therefore, the judgment dismissing Penguin's complaint was vacated and the case remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion and with the Court of Appeals' response to the certified question.
    Posted: May 12, 2011
  • Larry Montz, et al v. Pilgrim Films & Television, In, et al
    Plaintiffs sued defendants alleging copyright infringement, breach of implied contract, breach of confidence, and several other causes of actions where defendants produced a television series on the Sci-Fi Channel based on plaintiffs' materials. At issue was whether the district court properly dismissed plaintiff's contractual claims on the basis that the claims were preempted by copyright law. The court reversed and held that copyright law did not preempt a breach of implied contract claim where plaintiffs alleged a bilateral expectation that they would be compensated for use of the idea, the essential element of a Desny v. Wilder claim that separated it from preempted claims for the use of copyrighted material. The court also held that the breach of confidence claim was not preempted by copyright law where the claim protected the duty of trust or confidential relationship between the parties, an extra element that made it qualitatively different from a copyright claim. The court also held that the complaint sufficiently alleged facts to make out a claim for breach of implied contract and breach of confidence.
    Posted: May 4, 2011
  • Latin Am. Music Co. v. Am. Soc'y of Composers, Authors, and Publishers
    After successfully defending an appeal from a verdict that it had not infringed a song copyright, ASCAP obtained an award of about $62,000 in attorney fees. The First Circuit affirmed. The song copyright was timely registered and, in any case, failure to timely register would not bar an award of fees to a party successfully defending an infringement claim. ASCAP was a prevailing party under 17 U.S.C. 505 and the award was reasonable.
    Posted: April 21, 2011