In Artist Revenue Advocates v. West, et al., a jury in the C.D. California had ruled against Kanye West (a/k/a Ye), and Ye demanded the judge who had presided over the trial to wipe out the verdict. Not surprisingly, the judge declined to second-guess the jury (or herself). In 2018, four musicians made a minute-long…
Reddit, Inc. v. SerpApi LLC is a case out of the Southern District of New York. Reddit sued to stop defendants from scraping, in only two weeks, more than 1.8 billion search-results of Reddit content. It argued that under the Digital Millinum Copyright Act (DMCA), Reddit could protect publicly visible search results. Defendant SerpApi’s scraping…
In Morgan Art Foundation Limited v. Michael McKenzie d/b/a American Image Art, a jury held the defendant liable for copyright and trademark infringement. Here, the Southern District of New York considered a post-judgment motion for a permanent injunction against the defendant. In 1999, artist Robert Indiana assigned his copyright and trademark rights to the Morgan…
In Ted Entertainment, Inc. v. Alexandra Marwa Saber, et al., the Central District of California dismissed plaintiff’s claim of copyright infringement stemming from defendant’s “reaction video” on YouTube. Plaintiff is a production company owned by Ethan Klein that is mostly known for its content on YouTube, while defendant Saber is an individual content producer on…
In Eight Mile Style, LLC et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. et al., the rights management company for Eminem brought claims for direct, vicarious, and contributory copyright infringement against Meta in the Eastern District of Michigan. In December of 2020, Meta entered an agreement with a licensing agency to allow users to add music to…
In Deque Systems v. Browserstack, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the Eastern District of Virginia’s summary judgment granted in favor of defendant, because the plaintiff had failed to provide its calculation of damages until after discovery closed. Deque is in the business of developing software that helps companies audit their websites for compliance with the Americans…
Woodall v. Walt Disney Co. et al. was a copyright and trade secrets case in the Central District of California that culminated in a costly “bench slap” for the plaintiff and his counsel. Sanctions were issued after a five-year-long legal battle with a pedigree of bad-faith filings, including a forged confidentiality agreement. The plaintiff had…
Dish Network L.L.C. v. Fraifer was a case in the Eleventh Circuit that relied on the WHOIS domain search tool to pierce the corporate veils of two companies controlled by the same principal. Dish alleged that defendants pirated Arabic-language programming to which it had exclusive distribution rights. Dish Network (“Dish”) brought this suit against Tele-Center, Inc.,…
Baron App, Inc. d/b/a Cameo v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. is a case in the Northern District of California that pits a company supplying bespoke celebrity greetings against an AI company that provides AI-generated celebrity videos. The plaintiff has a registered trademark for CAMEO and uses it in connection with having live actors record videos…
Nwosuocha v. Glover et al. was a copyright infringement case that started in the Southern District of New York and found its final disposition in the Second Circuit. The case centered around an “incurable” defect in Nwosuocha’s claim that he was warned about and subsequently ignored. Emelike Nwosuocha (a/k/a Kid Wes) brought the claim of…