Posts Tagged: "Copyright Litigation"

The original lawsuit filed in December 2015 targeted The Big Bang Theory’s use of the song Soft Kitty, a song which the character Sheldon Cooper asks people to sing whenever he’s sick or needs mothering. The lyrics to that song were written in the 1930s by Edith Newlin, a published children’s author and mother of the two plaintiffs listed in the case. The lyrics were published by Willis Music Company in 1937 in a compilation where the song was titled Warm Kitty. Willis renewed the copyright registration covering the collection of nursery school songs in 1964. The plaintiffs alleged that this renewal served to register and renew Newlin’s rights to the Soft Kitty lyrics. This, the plaintiffs reasoned, required Willis to request permission from Newlin or her successors to license the song to Warner Bros. Entertainment, producers of The Big Bang Theory.

The ruling has wide implications for both the fashion apparel and home furnishings industry, both of which rely on distinctive, eye-catching designs to sell products. The upshot for clothing and furniture companies is that the Varsity Brands ruling gives product manufacturers an additional tool to combat knock-off designs. With that in mind, manufacturers should review their product line to ensure their copyright-eligible products are protected under this new standard.

In Star Athletica Breyer laments that the majority is ignoring the statute, refers to copyrights as a monopoly, and explains that copyrights are a tax on consumers… These seemingly innocent comments demonstrate a breathtaking dishonesty, which is hardly a newsworthy conclusion, or even much of a revelation to anyone in the patent community. Still, over the past few days the drivel that has been sprinkled into Supreme Court opinions has been particularly nauseating. The ends justify the means for the Supreme Court. When it is convenient they defer to Congress and wax poetically about the importance of stare decisis, as they actually had the gall to do in Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment. When adhering to well-established rules and expectations of an entire industry is inconvenient, they create exceptions to statutes, ignore statutory schemes altogether, and overrule generations of well-established law.

On Wednesday, March 22nd, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in a copyright case, which clarifies federal copyright law surrounding whether features incorporated into the design of a useful article are eligible for copyright protection. In a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court held in Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc. that such features are eligible for copyright protection if they can be perceived as a work of art separate from the useful article and would qualify as an protectable work if imagined separately from the useful article.

The most active defendants in copyright lawsuits include department store chain Ross Stores, Inc. (NASDAQ:ROST), which was named as a defendant in 276 cases. Following Ross Stores are a series of retailers: TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TJX), named a defendant in 123 cases; Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a defendant in 84 cases; Burlington Coat Factory (NYSE:BURL), a defendant in 74 cases; and Rainbow USA Inc., a defendant in 66 cases. Except for Amazon, these are primarily off-price department stores offering brand name goods at discounted prices. Music publishers like Universal Music Group, Inc. (65 suits) and education publishers like Pearson Education, Inc. (NYSE:PSO) (50 suits) are also among the top defendants in copyright cases.

On the menu this week for Other Barks & Bites… Video game systems developed by Nintendo and Sony are targeted in a patent infringement suit filed in Delaware federal court. The infamous scan-to-email patent giving rise to the patent troll debate has finally been invalidated at the Federal Circuit. A multi-billion dollar copyright suits between two American tech giants gets new life from Oracle. California’s state legislature moves to create trademark protections for marijuana products at the state level, circumventing federal restrictions on such trademarks. And Zillow gets hit with a copyright infringement verdict.

On Thursday, January 26th, Burbank, CA-based entertainment giant Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) and movie production firm DreamWorks of Universal City, CA, were named as defendants in a copyright infringement suit involving the 2016 romantic drama The Light Between Oceans. The suit, which also targets the screenplay author and NYC-based book publisher Simon & Schuster, Inc., charges that both the 2016 movie and the 2012 novel upon which it is based were both plagiarized from a 2004 screenplay written by the plaintiff, Joseph Nobile. The case has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.).

A copyright infringement battle of intergalactic proportions between Plaintiffs CBS and Paramount Pictures, and the company (along with its principal Alec Peters) looking to produce the crowdfunded Star Trek fan film Axanar (“Defendants”) is heating up. The parties have filed numerous motions in the past month, and the Court’s recent ruling on the parties’ motions for summary judgment means the case is inching closer and closer to its January 31 trial date… The Court then concluded that the “Axanar Works have objective substantial similarity to the Star Trek Copyrighted Works,” and therefore it “leaves the question of subjective substantial similarity to the jury.”

A patent and copyright squabble involving two players in the networking space for information technology (IT) development, which has ramped up in recent years, saw an interesting round of events play out in federal court and regulatory agencies this past December. At the center of the brouhaha is American networking and telecommunications giant Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) of San Jose, CA, which has filed multiple legal actions against Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) of Santa Clara, CA, alleging that Arista has moved into the networking equipment market using technologies developed and patented by Cisco, specifically through former Cisco employees who founded Arista.

Dallas-based auction house Heritage Auctions filed a copyright infringement complaint against New York City-based Christie’s, Inc. and Christie’s database subsidiary Collectrium. The suit alleges that Christie’s and Collectrium engaged in stealing copyright-protected images and lifted other private data from Heritage’s servers in order to drive its own sales… Heritage first identified this July that a crawling “spider” software program was operating on its servers accessible through HA.com, Heritage’s official website for offering online-only auctions and providing image catalogues of items available through live auctions. In its complaint, Heritage noted that the activities conducted by the spider software program, including database scraping or copying content for commercial purposes, is prohibited under terms of a Website User Agreement to which each registered user of HA.com agrees upon creating an account.

Entities owning the copyrights to music created by the late pop star Prince had filed suit against Roc Nation, the entertainment company owned by rapper Jay Z, which is affiliated with the streaming music service Tidal. Plaintiffs NPG Records and NPG Music Publishing allege that Tidal and Roc Nation have engaged in copyright infringement by adding a series of 15 unauthorized Prince albums to the Tidal catalog this June. The case is filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.

On Monday, November 21st, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.) issued a decision allowing a copyright case involving the well-known spiritual song and 20th century civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” to go forward. At the center of this case is the question of whether or not “We Shall Overcome” is part of the public domain in the United States, and the recent decision by S.D.N.Y. Judge Denise Cote indicates that the song could in fact be public domain material. “Resolution of the issues of originality and ownership will require discovery and a more developed record,” Cote’s decision reads.

Unfortunately for Hasbro, not all of its activities in the mobile gaming business have been completely original, leaving the game developer open to legal challenges. In late October, it was reported that Hasbro was named as a defendant in a copyright infringement action filed by Turkey-based gaming developer Peak Games in the San Francisco courthouse of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (N.D. Cal.). At the center of Peak Games’ complaint is Hasbro’s My Little Pony: Puzzle Party mobile game app, which Peak Games alleges is essentially a clone of that firm’s Toy Blast game.

McDonald’s choice to go with a pre-treated graffiti look in some of its restaurants has posed legal challenges along with consumer concerns. On October 3rd, McDonald’s was listed as a defendant in a copyright infringement action filed by Jade Berreau, the administrator of the estate of graffiti artist Dashiell Snow, a former girlfriend of Snow and the mother of his only child. Berreau alleges that graffiti decor used by McDonald’s in the interior of hundreds of its restaurants around the world directly infringes on a “tag,” or graffiti lettering, which was developed and used by Snow and became strongly associated with his work. The case has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (C.D. Cal.).

The plaintiffs allege that defendants YouTube-mp3 and its owner/operater, German citizen Philip Matesanz, facilitate the infringement of copyrighted sound recordings by offering a service that “rapidly and seamlessly” removes the audio tracks from YouTube videos, allowing users to store MP3 files on computing devices without the consent of YouTube or the plaintiffs and in violation of YouTube’s terms of service. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (C.D. Cal.), includes complaints for direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement and circumvention of technological measures. The suit lists 15 plaintiffs, including UMG Recordings, Warner Bros. Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Atlantic Recording Corporation and Nonesuch Records.