Justia Copyright Opinion Summaries

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 attorneyâs 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.