U.S. Supreme Court Confirms that States Have Sovereign Immunity from Copyright Infringement Suits–Allen v. Cooper
by guest blogger Tyler Ochoa On March 23, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held in Allen v. Cooper, No. 18-877, that states have sovereign immunity from claims of copyright infringement, and that 17 U.S.C. § 511, which purports to waive…
Videogame Can Replicate Musician’s “Signature Move” (Unless It’s a False Endorsement, Which It Isn’t)–Pellegrino v. Epic Games
Pellegrino is a saxophone player with “externally rotatable feet,” which has helped him develop a nifty “signature” dance move while playing. The videogame Fortnite sells “emotes,” optional customizations for players’ digital avatars. Pellegrino alleges that the “Phone It In” emote…
Videogame Doesn’t Infringe Tattoo Copyright By Depicting Basketball Players–Solid Oak Sketches v. 2K Games
This case deals with a venerable and vexing copyright law problem: if a person doesn’t own the copyright to his/her tattoos, do other people infringe by accurately depicting the person? The answer surely has to be “no.” Otherwise, ordinary daily…
YouTuber Loses Lawsuit Over Channel Termination–Mishiyev v. Alphabet
Mishiyev, a/k/a “DJ Short-e,” is a YouTuber who claims he had 100M+ views and 250k subscribers. His videos started getting copyright complaints in 2016. He counternoticed those, but he claims he nevertheless saw traffic dropoffs and started making demands of…
Can a Retweet Constitute Copyright Infringement? Uh….–Bell v. Chicago Cubs
Bell authored a book called “Winning Isn’t Normal.” He got a copyright registration for the book and a separate registration for a 241 word passage from the book (I won’t include that passage here for reasons that soon will be…
Video Excerpts Qualify as Fair Use (and Another 512(f) Claim Fails)–Hughes v. Benjamin
Hughes is a YouTuber. She made a 10 minute video of Hillary Clinton’s election night party called “We Thought She Would Win” and posted it to her channel. Benjamin also is a YouTuber, but on the opposite end of the…
A Blog’s RSS Feed May Not Grant an Implied Copyright License–MidlevelU v. Newstex
MidlevelU publishes a blog on nursing topics. Like most blogs, it contains an RSS feed. Newstex subscribed to the RSS feed and republished the blog posts as part of its now-defunct subscription service called “Scholarly Blog Index.” MidlevelU sued Newstex…
Top Internet Law Developments of 2019
It’s increasingly hard to find good news in Internet law, so I organized this year’s Internet Law roundup by categories of doom. Trigger warning: you should grab some tissues before proceeding. Doomed (in a Bad Way) Doomed: User-Generated Content. It…
Java API Classes as Fictional Characters―A Proposal for Google v. Oracle (Guest Blog Post)
by Marketa Trimble In disputes over the copyrightability of computer programs and their elements, it is common to invoke analogies from literature. In Google v. Oracle (in which the U.S. Supreme Court granted a cert petition on November 15, 2019), Oracle began…
Internet Access Provider Gets Another Devastating Result in a Secondary Copyright Infringement Case—Sony v. Cox
In a recent post, I lamented how courts are exposing IAPs to secondary copyright liability for their subscribers’ activities. This is the result of a breakdown in the détente associated with the failed Copyright Alert System, and its demise has…