By Ryan Smith and Thomas F. Zuber of Zuber & Taillieu LLP
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals joined the Fifth and Seventh Circuits in holding that a completed application filed with the U.S. Copyright Office suffices for “registration” for litigation purposes. In Cosmetic Ideas, Inc. v. IAC/Interactivecorp. 606 F.3d 612 (9th Cir. 2010), the Ninth Circuit determined that although the… More...
In Richlin v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, 531 F.3d 962 (9th Cir. 2008), the heirs of one coauthor of the treatment that served as the basis of “The Pink Panther” series of movies asserted an interest in the motion picture copyright. The Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court’s grant of More...
Under the Copyright Act, a registered copyright owner has the option to elect to recover either statutory damages or actual damages for infringement. Because actual damages are often difficult to prove, the option to elect statutory damages is extremely valuable. Section 412 of the Copyright Act, More...
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s decision in Litecubes LLC v. Northern Light Products clarified some critical elements of IP litigation jurisprudence. Litecubes LLC v. Northern Light Products, ___ F3d ___, 2008 WL 1848659 (C.A. Fed. (Mo.)) The Litecubes Court took the opportunity More...
It was once highly unusual for a successful copyright infringement plaintiff to win punitive damages – indeed, most courts have held that punitives were wholly unavailable for claims under the federal Copyright Act. But in the last decade, courts have been increasingly willing to allow punitive More...
In its decision in US v. ASCAP, 485 F. Supp. 2d 438 (SDNY 2007), the Southern District of New York clarified how the Copyright Law concept of “public performance” applies to the Internet concepts of downloading versus streaming. While on its face, the decision appears to establish a bright line More...
In this appeal brought by both the copyright owner Perfect 10, Inc. and defendants which included Internet search engine and Internet retailer (Google, Inc. and Amazon.com, Inc.), the Court of Appeals ruled that the Internet search engine operator's act of framing in-line linked full-size images of More...
The Ninth Circuit recently clarified the requirements for notice under the safe harbor provision of section 512 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Though other courts have created relatively flexible standards, the Ninth Circuit ruled that compliance with all of the section’s clauses is More...
