Posts Tagged: "U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit"

President Joe Biden on Wednesday nominated eight new judges for federal courts, including Judge Lucy Koh for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Koh has been a prominent figure in intellectual property (IP) cases in recent years, particularly due to her 2019 order finding that Qualcomm had engaged in unlawful licensing practices, which included her issuance of a permanent, worldwide injunction against several of Qualcomm’s core business practices. IP leaders including retired Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel and law professor Kristen Osenga submitted amicus briefs in FTC v. Qualcomm detailing Koh’s legal errors in that ruling. The Ninth Circuit ultimately vacated her decision and reversed the injunction.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday ruled that California common law on copyright protection does not include a right of public performance, reversing a partial summary judgment for Flo & Eddie, which controls the rights to the songs of the rock band the Turtles. The case began in 2013, when Flo & Eddie sued Sirius XM Radio, Inc. for playing the Turtles’ iconic pre-1972 recordings, such as “Happy Together” and “Elenore.” While AM/FM radio stations do not pay public performance royalties to sound recording owners, digital and satellite radio providers like Sirius XM must pay public performance royalties whenever they broadcast post-1972 music.

On Tuesday, June 1, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a petition for writ of certiorari filed by fabric designer Unicolors seeking to challenge the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s ruling last May that reversed a jury verdict finding Swedish multinational clothing firm Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) liable for copyright infringement. The district court eventually entered a judgment awarding more than $500,000 to Unicolors. The case will ask the nation’s highest court to decide whether the Ninth Circuit properly construed the language of 17 U.S.C. § 411 in determining that the district court was required to refer Unicolors’ copyright registration to the U.S. Copyright Office because it contained inaccurate information with no evidence that the inaccurate information contained any indicia of fraud or material error regarding the work covered by the copyright registration.

With brick-and-mortar stores closing at rapid paces and online sales surging, marketers are developing new models to facilitate sales through innovative online platforms. One of those new business models is Redbubble’s hybrid “print-on-demand” service. Two recent Court of Appeals decisions – from the Sixth and Ninth Circuits – consider important questions about when these new approaches to online sales gives rise to liability for trademark infringement, trademark counterfeiting, and right of publicity violations.

On October 30, Michael Skidmore, Trustee for the Randy Craig Wolfe Trust, filed a petition for rehearing of the denial of its August 6 petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court. In the original petition, Skidmore requested that the Supreme Court review a March judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit siding with Led Zeppelin in a long-running case examining whether the opening notes of the band’s legendary song “Stairway to Heaven” infringed the song “Taurus,” written by Robert Wolfe of the band Spirit, a contemporary of Led Zeppelin. Skidmore brought the original suit in 2014. In the petition for rehearing, Skidmore claims that the “Ninth Circuit’s en banc opinion herald[ed] the ‘death of music copyright,’ just as happened to literary copyright before it.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) just can’t take “no, you’re wrong” for an answer. Despite its embarrassing reversal by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in August, the FTC has now appealed its Qualcomm case to the full Ninth Circuit. A three-judge appellate panel overturned the trial court’s errant ruling, giving the FTC a comeuppance in its antitrust suit against Qualcomm, the trailblazer in wireless technology with thousands and thousands of patented inventions. The sheer cliff the FTC seeks to climb features daunting crags. The appellate judges ruled unanimously. They also found fundamental problems in the trial court’s (and FTC’s) legal and factual analysis, and so they gave basic aspects of the case fresh eyes, or de novo, review. And several federal departments, including the Justice Department Antitrust Division, weighed in with the trial court in opposition to the FTC.

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a decision on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada in Corbello v. Valli. In particular, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment after a jury trial in favor of Valli, wherein the panel held that the musical, Jersey Boys, did not infringe Corbello’s copyright in an autobiography of Four Seasons’ band member Tommy DeVito. In the late 1980s, Tommy DeVito engaged with writer Rex Woodard to ghostwrite the autobiography of Tommy DeVito (the Work), which told “complete and truthful chronicle of the Four Seasons.” Upon completion of the book, Woodard and DeVito were unable to find a publisher for the book prior to Woodard’s death in 1991. Diana Corbello, Woodard’s widow, was the successor to Woodard’s interest in the Work and was also unsuccessful in finding a publisher for the Work. In 2005, the musical, Jersey Boys, debuted, and it was revealed that DeVito had registered the Work under his name only.

On May 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision in Sohm v. Scholastic in which the appellate court reversed in part a decision handed out by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) granting partial summary judgment to Sohm for Scholastic’s infringement of copyright to six photographs and dismissing other claims by Sohm. Among the issues decided by the Second Circuit on appeal was an issue of first impression on group registrations. The Second Circuit decision aligned with case law from the Ninth Circuit, which has held that an individual can sue for copyright infringement covering individual works within a group registration even if that individual isn’t named as an author in the group registration.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a squeaking dog toy resembling a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey is an expressive work entitled to First Amendment protection.  VIP Prods. LLC v. Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc., No. 18-16012 (9th Cir. Mar. 31, 2020).  The court  reversed a bench trial verdict that the toy infringed and diluted the JACK DANIEL’S trade dress and remanded for further reconsideration by the district court.  Before the district court may find that the toy infringed Jack Daniel’s famous trade dress, the Ninth Circuit held that the district court must first apply the Second Circuit’s Rogers test, which will require it to consider whether VIP’s use of the trade dress was artistically relevant to the toy’s expressive character, and whether VIP’s use of the trade dress explicitly misleads consumers as to the source of the toy.  The Rogerstest, though, has only been applied to expressive works such as books, songs, video games and movies; it has never been applied to consumer products like handbags and perfume, even if those products were intended as parodies.  The Ninth Circuit’s decision expands the scope of First Amendment protection far beyond traditionally expressive works, and risks exposing a wide variety of brand owners to infringements based on alleged parody.

The en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ultimately sided with Led Zeppelin in a long-running case examining whether the opening notes of the band’s legendary song “Stairway to Heaven” infringed the song “Taurus,” written by Robert Wolfe of the band Spirit, a contemporary of Led Zeppelin. Michael Skidmore, Trustee for Wolfe’s estate, brought the original suit in 2014. The Court notably struck down its own “inverse ratio rule,” which dictates that there is “a lower standard of proof of substantial similarity when a high degree of access is shown,” as set out in the 2000 case of Three Boys Music Corp. v. Bolton. In September 2018, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit vacated-in-part the judgment of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California that “Stairway to Heaven” was not substantially similar to “Taurus”. 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. However, the Court agreed to rehear the case en banc in June 2019.

On February 13, the Ninth Circuit heard oral argument in the FTC v. Qualcomm case. Counsel for Qualcomm and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) argued primarily about whether Qualcomm’s behavior resulted in anticompetitive harm, while the attorney from the Department of Justice, which had been granted five minutes to argue on Qualcomm’s behalf, faced tough questions about claims that the district court’s injunction posed a threat to national security. While the DOJ’s intervention in this case is interesting, the best summation of the argument came from the bench when Judge Stephen Murphy, District Court Judge of the Eastern District of Michigan sitting by designation stated: “Anticompetitive behavior is prohibited under the Sherman Act. Hyper-competitive behavior is not. This case asks us to draw the line between the two.”

On August 30, a number of amicus briefs were filed in the FTC v. Qualcomm appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The appeal stems from a May 2019 order finding Qualcomm liable for anticompetitive behavior and issuing “sweeping” injunctive relief. Following Judge Koh’s ruling, her opinion has been called “disastrous,” an “utter failure,” and “based on scant evidence,” and further been accused of “mangling” antitrust law. The Ninth Circuit, in granting a partial stay of the injunction, noted there were “serious questions on the merits” of Judge Koh’s decision. Three of the amicus briefs in particular point out the errors in Judge Koh’s opinions that have given rise to these “serious questions.” Retired Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel filed an amicus brief focusing primarily on patent law issues, including the smallest salable patent-practicing unit (SSPPU) concept and reasonable royalty calculation. The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) and Scholars of Law and Economics filed an amicus brief arguing that Judge Koh’s decision “is disconnected from the underlying economics of the case” and will cause serious harm to antitrust law. Finally, a number of Antitrust and Patent Law Professors, Economists, and Scholars filed an amicus brief highlighting how antitrust overreach, as they allege is present here, will harm innovation and arguing that the district court failed to engage in the level of real-world economic analysis as is required by this case.

Commissioner Christine Wilson of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) addressed the IPWatchdog Patent Masters Symposium on Tuesday, September 10, emphasizing three main points in her keynote: that Judge Lucy Koh’s decision in FTC v. Qualcomm was flawed, that antitrust analyses should be more focused on dynamic, rather than static effects, and that, despite the latter point, antitrust authorities routinely try and fail to integrate dynamic effects into antitrust law. She was clear up front that her views did not necessarily match those of her fellow commissioners. First, Wilson reiterated the ideas expressed in her May 28 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, which she summarized by saying that U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Lucy Koh’s opinion in the FTC v. Qualcomm case “creates bad law and bad policy.” Wilson explained that Koh in her lengthy analysis took the opportunity to “radically expand a company’s legal obligation to help its competitors” by reviving a “discredited” 1985 Supreme Court case, Aspen Skiing Co. v. Aspen Highlands Skiing Corp. “My opposition to the court’s opinion does not stem from any desire to help or protect Qualcomm,” Wilson said. “I am focused on applying and preserving sound antitrust principles and this decision scares me.”

On December 28, 2018, the limited liability company representing famed Seattle-area grunge rock band Nirvana sued clothing designer Marc Jacobs and fashion retailers Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue in the U.S. Federal District Court for the Central District of California. At the center of the lawsuit are copyright and trademark infringement allegations regarding the use of Nirvana’s “smiley face” logo on a line of designer clothing made by Marc Jacobs. Nirvana alleges that Marc Jacobs has used the band’s common law trademarks and infringed the band’s copyright in the smiley face logo in a misleading way in order to make it appear that Marc Jacobs’ “Bootleg Redux Grunge” clothing line is endorsed by or somehow associated with Nirvana. Nirvana first licensed the use of the smiley face logo, designed by deceased Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain in 1992, and it has been continuously used to identify Nirvana’s music and licensed merchandise since.

The case is interesting, however, not just because it involved famous subjects – a “renowned photographer” (as the Plaintiff was described in the court’s first sentence), a famous brand (Nike) and one its most well-known logos (“Jumpman”), and a photo of one of the most famous people in the world (Michael Jordan) – although these items alone perhaps merit some attention. But for lawyers and those who deal with copyright protection in the business world, perhaps more interesting is the court’s explication of the classic copyright concept of the idea-expression dichotomy, as well as its holding that the photograph at issue, while not infringed, was entitled to broad protection.