In Re: OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation is another proposed class action by authors involving alleged infringement by large language models (LLMs). Here, the class would represent authors and copyright holders of fiction and non-fiction books who assert claims on their own and on behalf of the proposed class. Plaintiffs alleged OpenAI infringed their copyrights…
Richardson v. Kharbouch was a case we wrote about in February of 2024 that hinged on the difference between copyright in a composition and copyright in a sound recording. The case involved an ambitious, teen hip-hop artist known as Hotwire the Producer (Eddie Richardson), who crafted a unique beat that he later identified in the…
Zesty Paws v. Nutramax was an appeal in the Second Circuit from the Southern District of New York that dealt with false advertising claims under the Lanham Act. Zesty Paws and Nutramax sell competing products in the veterinary supplement industry. After Zesty Paws advertised itself as the number one pet supplement brand in the United…
Pleasrdao v. Shkreli is a case in the Eastern District of New York that pits some of hip hop’s most renowned artists against someone already convicted of securities fraud. Defendant Martin Shkreli’s name might sound familiar because of some white collar crimes for which he was incarcerated in the 2010s, but this case stems from…
DejaVuAI v. Kapustin is a case from the Western District of Washington that began as a claim of breach of fiduciary duty and became a case about the misappropriation of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA). At issue here was a motion to convert a temporary restraining order against the defendant into…
In Re Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation addresses a class action of authors and visual artists against Google for direct copyright infringement, and its parent company, Alphabet, for vicarious infringement. This particular case stands out because the plaintiffs claim that copyright infringement occurred when the rightsholders’ works were copied into generative AI models, not that…
Trader Joe’s Company v. Trader Joe’s United is a trademark dispute wrapped in a labor relations case — or the other way around. A three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit found the latter to be true, reversing the Central District of California’s deference to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) over trademark infringement claims. Trader…
One of my mentors at the first law firm where I worked said, “You’re not a grownup until you’ve lost one you should have won, and you’ve won one that you should have lost.” In CareDX Inc. v. Natera, Inc.,plaintiff biomedical company CareDx seems to have done both, first in the District of Delaware and…
A muralist’s claim of copyright infringement had several false starts, a change of venue, and a stinging defeat on appeal – all of which could have been prevented.
A subpoena enforcement action in the Ninth Circuit concerned the movie studio Capstone Pictures’ DMCA claim against internet service provider Cox Communications. Capstone alleged that Cox violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) by not suspending the accounts of users who were downloading and sharing its movie Fall. At issue was section 512 (“512”) of…