Posts Tagged: "elements"

Ninth Circuit Vacates and Remands ‘Stairway to Heaven’ Copyright Case Over Erroneous and Prejudicial Jury Instructions

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently issued an opinion in Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin, which vacated-in-part a judgment out of the Central District of California that Led Zeppelin’s hit classic rock song “Stairway to Heaven” was not substantially similar to “Taurus,” a song written by the late songwriter Randy Wolfe, a member of the band Spirit. The case was remanded back to the district court after the appellate court found that certain instructions given by the district court to the jury were erroneous and prejudicial.

Judge Finds Taylor Swift Lyrics Lack Originality and Creativity

So uncreative did Judge Michael Fitzgerald find Taylor Swift’s 2014 hit Shake It Off, he dismissed a copyright infringement case filed against her. In his opinion Judge Michael Fitzgerald explained the allegedly infringing lyrics used by Swift lacked even the modest level of creativity required for copyright protection… “The concept of actors acting in accordance with their essential nature is not at all creative; it is banal,” Fitzgerald worte. “In the early 2000s, popular culture was adequately suffused with the concepts of players and haters to render the phrases ‘playas … gonna play’ or ‘haters … gonna hate,’ standing on their own, no more creative than ‘runners gonna run,’ ‘drummers gonna drum,’ or ‘swimmers gonna swim.’”

Nintendo Switch gaming console is at center of patent infringement suit filed by Gamevice

Gamevice is asserting a single patent in this case: U.S. Patent No. 9126119, titled Combination Computing Device and Game Controller with Flexible Bridge Section. Issued in September 2015, it claims a combination device having a computing device with sides disposed between an electronic display screen and the device’s back, a communication port interacting with the computing device and having a pair of structures confining the computing device, an input device in communication with the communication port and having a pair of control modules providing input module apertures securing an instructional input device.