Justia Copyright Opinion Summaries

Alaska Stock, a stock photography agency, registered large numbers of photographs at a time under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 101 et seq., listing only some of the authors and not listing titles for each photograph. Alaska Stock licensed Houghton Mifflin to use pictures it had registered, for fees based on the number of publications. After Houghton Mifflin greatly exceeded the number of publications it had paid for, Alaska Stock filed suit for injunctive relief, actual and statutory damages, attorneys' fees, and costs. The court concluded that Alaska Stock successfully registered the copyright both to its collections and to the individual images contained therein; the statute required identification of the author and title of the "work," which was the collective work, and extended registration to the component parts if the party registering the collective work owned the copyright to the component parts, as Alaska Stock did; the procedure applied for over three decades by the Register of Copyrights to registration by stock photo agencies complied with the statutory requirements and did not violate any clear requirement to list individual authors and titles of the components within the work; the Register of Copyrights' reading that a collection of stock photos may be registered without individual titles, and without naming more than three of the authors and merely designating the number of authors, pursuant to an assignment in the language Alaska Stock used, was reasonable and persuasive; and therefore, the court reversed the district court's dismissal. View "Alaska Stock v. Houghton Mifflin" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs were Massachusetts-based producers of “reggaeton” music. This case centered on seven songs released on an album distributed by Defendants that allegedly infringed upon copyrights held by Plaintiffs and breached contracts to which Plaintiffs claimed to be parties and/or third-party beneficiaries. The district court granted Defendants’ motion for summary judgment, concluding (1) with respect to the copyright claims, Plaintiffs failed to register their copyrights in the underlying compositions they claimed were infringed, as required under 17 U.S.C. 411(A); and (2) with respect to the breach of contract claims, there was no evidence of a direct agreement between the parties or of third-party beneficiary status. The First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment for Defendants on the copyright and contract claims. View "Alicea v. Ayala" on Justia Law

Plaintiff was cast in a minor role in an adventure film with the working title "Desert Warrior." The film never materialized and plaintiff's scene was used, instead, in an anti-Islamic film titled "Innocence of Muslims." The film was uploaded to YouTube.com and her brief performance was dubbed over so that she appeared to be asking, "Is your Mohammed a child molester?" An Egyptian cleric subsequently issued a fatwa, calling for the killing of everyone involved with the film. After Google refused to take it down from YouTube, plaintiff sought a restraining order seeking removal of the film, claiming that the posting of the video infringed the copyright in her performance. The district court treated the application as a motion for a preliminary injunction but denied the motion. The court concluded that plaintiff demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits where plaintiff had an independent copyright interest in her performance; the work for hire doctrine was inapplicable in this instance because plaintiff was not a traditional employee and the filmmaker was not in the regular business of making films; and although plaintiff granted the filmmaker an implied license to use plaintiff's performance, the filmmaker exceeded the bounds of the license when he lied to plaintiff in order to secure her participation and she agreed to perform in reliance on that lie. The court also concluded that plaintiff faced irreparable harm absent an injunction where plaintiff took legal action as soon as the film received worldwide attention and she began receiving death threats; the harm plaintiff complained of was real and immediate; and plaintiff demonstrated a causal connection because removing the film from YouTube would help disassociate her from the film's anti-Islamic message and such disassociation would keep her from suffering future threats and physical harm. Finally, the balance of the equities and the public interest favored plaintiff's position. Accordingly, the court concluded that the district court abused its discretion in denying the motion for a preliminary injunction. The court reversed and remanded. View "Garcia v. Google, Inc." on Justia Law

When legendary blues musician Robert Johnson died intestate in 1938, he had no money and appeared to have left no assets to distribute to heirs, so no estate was opened at that time. But the increasing popularity of Johnson's music over the years following his death led Steven LaVere, a music producer from Tennessee who owned Delta Haze Corporation, to contact Johnson's half-sister, Carrie Thompson, about previously unpublished photographs of Johnson. Believing Thompson to be Johnson's only heir, LaVere requested the photographs to launch a new release of Johnson's music. The legatees of Carrie Thompson sought to recover royalties and fees from the use of two photographs that were ultimately used in the project. Among the several reasons the trial court denied their claim was that the statute of limitations had expired. Finding no reversible error, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Anderson v. LaVere" on Justia Law

Brownstein and Lindsay worked at LSDI, a direct mailing list company. In 1993 Lindsay began developing rules for categorizing names by ethnicity. Lindsay enlisted Brownstein to create computer programs that did everything from rewriting names into proper data format to turning the rules into computer code. The combined system of Lindsay’s rules and Brownstein’s computer code was called the LCID. Lindsay received a copyright registration for the rules in 1996, entitled “Ethnic Determinant System — Knowledge and Rule/Exception Basis,” including a copy of Brownstein’s programs as a “deposit copy” for the registration, 17 U.S.C. 407(a) and referencing associated “computer process” and “codes.” Lindsay listed herself as the only author. She gave Brownstein a copy of the registrations. He claims that he never reviewed them. Subsequently, LSDI demanded that Lindsay turnover the copyright registration. Lindsay and Brownstein left LSDI in 1997. Lindsay handled all business affairs and, over the next several years, executed several agreements to form new business entities to promote and transfer ownership of the LCID. There were several lawsuits with LSDI. In 2009, Brownstein left on bad terms, filed an oppressed shareholder lawsuit, and sought his own copyright registrations. He then sought a declaratory judgment of joint authorship of LCID under the Copyright Act. The district court found the claim time-barred and insufficient on the merits. The Third Circuit remanded, holding that an authorship claim accrues when a plaintiff’s authorship has been “expressly repudiated” and that courts have no authority to cancel copyright registrations. View "Brownstein v. Lindsay" on Justia Law

Swatch filed suit against Bloomberg for copyright infringement after Bloomberg obtained a copy of a recording of a conference call convened by Swatch to discuss the company's recently released earnings report with invited investment analysts. Bloomberg used the sound recording without authorization and disseminated it to paying subscribers. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Bloomberg based on Bloomberg's affirmative defense of fair use pursuant to the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 107. After balancing the fair use factors, the court concluded that Bloomberg's use was fair use. The court granted Swatch's motion to dismiss Bloomberg's cross-appeal where Bloomberg lacked appellate standing and the court lacked appellate jurisdiction. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court and dismissed the cross-appeal. View "Swatch Group v. Bloomberg" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, as representative of the estate of his father, filed suit against several entities with whom his father, Ronald Louis Smith, Sr., recorded music in the late 1970s. The estate alleged infringement of Smith's copyright in a musical composition entitled "Spank," along with a claim for breach of contract and a claim seeking a declaration of the validity of copyright transfer terminations the estate filed under 17 U.S.C. 203. Where a publisher has registered a claim of copyright in a work not made for hire, the court concluded that the beneficial owner has statutory standing to sue for infringement. The court held that the estate has adequately alleged facts to support its statutory standing to sue for infringement of the "Spank" copyright. Because the district court concluded that amendment of the complaint would be futile because the estate lacked statutory standing, the district court abused its discretion in denying leave to amend the complaint. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's denial of the estate's motion to amend the complaint. View "Smith, Jr. v. Casey, et al." on Justia Law

Inhale claimed copyright protection in the shape of a hookah water container that it first published in 2008 and registered with the United States Copyright Office in 2011. Inhale filed suit against Starbuzz for copyright infringement, claiming that Starbuzz sold water containers that were identical in shape to Inhale's container. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Starbuzz after determining that the shape of the water container was not copyrightable. The court concluded that the shape of a container is not independent of the container's utilitarian function - to hold the contents within its shape - because the shape accomplishes the function. Therefore, the district court correctly concluded that the shape of Inhale's hookah water container was not copyrightable. Further, the district court did not abuse its discretion under 17 U.S.C. 505 by awarding attorneys' fees to Starbuzz. Moreover, the court awarded attorneys' fees incurred in the defense of this appeal to Starbuzz under section 505 in an amount to be determined by the district court. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's judgment and remanded. View "Inhale, Inc. v. Starbuzz Tobacco, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff-Appellant Andrew Diversey sued several administrators and members of the Board of Regents of the University of New Mexico (UNM) for infringing his copyright to an unpublished dissertation. The district court dismissed plaintiff's complaint as untimely. The issue before the Tenth Circuit centered on the determination of when claims of copyright infringement accrue, and, in particular, whether accrual is delayed until a continuing course of infringement ceases. Barring the application of an appropriate tolling principle, a copyright infringement claim must be brought within three years of the date on which the plaintiff becomes aware of an act of infringement or becomes chargeable with knowledge of it. Applying this rule, the Court affirmed in part and reversed in part. View "Diversey v. Schmidly, et al" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for criminal copyright infringement based on his sale of Adobe software. The court applied the willfulness standard for criminal copyright cases as recently clarified in United States v. Liu and concluded that the jury instruction was flawed but did not rise to the level of plain error; the evidence of uncharged acts was properly admitted as intrinsic to the charged conduct and the court affirmed the conviction; and the district court erred in failing to award restitution reflecting the victim's actual loss and the court vacated the restitution order and remanded for reconsideration. View "United States v. Anderson, Jr." on Justia Law