Justia Copyright Opinion Summaries

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. View "In re Literary Works in Elec. Databases Litig." on Justia Law

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. View "John Wiley & Sons, Inc. v. Kirtsaeng" on Justia Law

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. View "Mavrix Photo, Inc. v. Brand Technologies, Inc., et al." on Justia Law

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. View "Nova Design Build, Inc. v. Modi" on Justia Law

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. View "Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., et al. v. X One X Productions, et al." on Justia Law

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. View "Spooner v. EEN, INC." on Justia Law

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. View "Barclays Capital Inc., et al. v. Theflyonthewall.com, Inc." on Justia Law

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. View "Murphy v. Millennium Radio Grp" on Justia Law

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. View "TMTV Corp. v. Mass Prod., Inc." on Justia Law

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. View "Ho v. Taflove" on Justia Law