When Do Defendants Have Access to Copyrighted Works Posted to the Internet?–Cooley v. Target Corp.
This case relates to Target’s “Cat & Jack” clothing line. The plaintiff, NOC, is a teenager who has copyrighted designs in hand-drawn dots that Target allegedly copied in the clothing line. Target and NOC had some direct dealings, including bringing…
Photo Licensing Service Qualifies for DMCA Online Safe Harbor–Steinmetz v. ShutterStock
This is a 512(c) online copyright safe harbor case. We rarely see opinions like this any more. In 2022, I’ve blogged just one other 512(c) case (Davis v. Pinterest). (Business Casual v. YouTube should have been a 512(c) case, but…
A 3 Month Check-In on the Copyright Claims Board (CCB)
On September 19, I gathered some CCB stats. This was 95 days after launch. 155 claims had been filed as of that date. (Today, the number is 157). That implies an annual run rate of less than 600 claims. Every…
Fortnite Emotes Don’t Infringe Dance Choreography–Hanagami v. Epic
Kyle Hanagami is a choreographer. He made a video called “How Long” featuring his choreography. It now has 36M+ views. Fortnite offered an emote called “It’s Complicated.” “Ten of the poses in the video and the emote are the same.”…
Using a CDN May Contribute to Finding Personal Jurisdiction–R18 v. ThisAV
The plaintiff runs R18, a Japanese-focused adult site. It has US copyright registrations for 50k+ videos. The defendant runs ThisAV, which the court describes as a Japanese-language video-hosting service. When I visited ThisAV (NSFW) this morning, it self-described (via Google…
11th Circuit UPHOLDS a 512(f) Plaintiff Win on Appeal–Alper Automotive v. Day to Day Imports
I’m going on a limb and saying that I believe this is the first appellate court upholding a 512(f) plaintiff win. The closest plaintiffs have gotten in the past is the Ninth Circuit’s Lenz case, which had plaintiff-favorable language but…
The Ninth Circuit Reaffirms the Discovery Rule for the Copyright Act’s Statute of Limitations — Starz v. MGM (Guest Blog Post)
By Guest Blogger Tyler Ochoa Eleven days ago, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed that: (1) the discovery rule of accrual applies to the Copyright Act’s three-year statute of limitations; and (2) when the discovery rule applies, the copyright owner is not…
A First Look at Copyright Claims Board (CCB) Filings
Today marks the 1-month anniversary of the Copyright Claims Board, so I thought it’s a good opportunity to take a very quick snapshot of the filings we’ve seen so far. My dataset. Number of Filings. The CCB has received 58…
Section 230 Doesn’t Create a Cause of Action–Goodman v. Sharp
The underlying dispute involved a copyright and trademark enforcement action against Goodman over a parody/satire video. The court summarizes Goodman’s arguments in this collateral lawsuit: Plaintiff alleges that Defendants abused process and engaged in attorney misconduct when the Academies sued…
Court Quashes 512(h) Subpoena on First Amendment Grounds–In re 512(h) Subpoena to Twitter
This case involves a pseudonymous Twitter account, “@CallMeMoneyBags.” The account tweeted some remarks, including photos, critical of billionaire Brian Sheth. Soon after, an entity called Bayside asserted copyright ownership of the photos and sent 512(c)(3) takedown notices to Twitter followed…