Mealey's Copyright : Mealey's : Legal News & Analysis

Mealey's Copyright

July 31, 2023
‘Virtually Certain’ Copyright Violations Keep AI Github Claims Alive, Class Says

OAKLAND, Calif. — Anonymous plaintiffs defended California unfair competition law (UCL) and other claims stemming from the alleged use of licensed software posted to the Github repository to train artificial intelligence from a motion to dismiss, saying their allegations were “plausible, highly likely and indeed, virtually certain.”
July 31, 2023
Maine Federal Judge Partly Dismisses Copyright Case Against EBay Inc.

PORTLAND, Maine — An artist whose copyrighted photographs of her children were photoshopped and then used by others selling counterfeit costumes on eBay.com saw her direct and contributory copyright infringement claims against the online marketplace dismissed July 28 by a federal judge in Maine.
July 28, 2023
Copyright, Trademark Claims Leveled Over Kushner Documentary Tossed

ROANOKE, Va. — A Virginia federal judge on July 27 granted dismissal of allegations of copyright and trademark infringement by the author of “Slumlord Millionaire,” a how-to book about the real estate industry, in connection with an identically-titled episode of the Netflix Inc. series “Dirty Money.”
July 25, 2023
8th Circuit Affirms: Copyright Defendant Lacks Minimum Contacts

ST. LOUIS — A copyright infringement lawsuit between two competing publishers over an ethics textbook was properly dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction by an Iowa federal judge, the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled July 24.
July 24, 2023
Zillow Asks 9th Circuit To Rethink Compilation Ruling In Online Photo Use Spat

SEATTLE — One month after a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a lower court’s finding that a statutory damages award against Zillow Group Inc. for its unauthorized use of photos on its website should be calculated on a per-photo basis, the real estate listings platform provider filed a motion for rehearing on July 21, arguing that the infringed photos constituted a single compilation, thus meriting a single damages award.
July 20, 2023
Jury Verdict, Fee Award Vacated By Panel In Chart Copyright Row

SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in what it deemed a case of first impression ruled that the registration of a derivative work entitles the author to a registration for all material included in the derivative, including material that previously appeared in an unregistered, original work.
July 19, 2023
9th Circuit: No Secondary Copyright Infringement For Embedded Instagram Photos

SAN FRANCISCO — Because pictures from Instagram’s platform are not saved on the servers of third-party websites that embed the pictures in posts, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel found that the social network operator cannot be found liable for secondary infringement of any embedded copyrighted photos.
July 14, 2023
Patent, Copyright, False Advertising Claims Won’t Proceed In Utah Dispute

SALT LAKE CITY — A lawsuit by two companies that assert a variety of intellectual property-related claims against a competitor and former employee was trimmed substantially by a federal judge in Utah at the summary judgment stage.
July 14, 2023
Music Publishers Call 2nd Circuit’s Direct Liability Standard ‘Impossibly Narrow’

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ holding that direct copyright liability can be found only against “the person who actually presses the button” to make infringing copies runs counter to the Copyright Act and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, a group of music publishers tells the high court in a reply brief supporting their petition for certiorari.
July 13, 2023
Google Accused Of Stealing Data From Gmail Accounts To Train AI Chatbot

SAN FRANCISCO — Eight anonymous plaintiffs filed a putative class action accusing Alphabet Inc., Google LLC and their AI subsidiary of violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL), copyright law and privacy laws by “stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans,” including the plaintiffs’ private data contained in their private Google email accounts, to train their AI chatbot.
July 11, 2023
Content Companies Say Artists Misunderstand How AI Apps Work

SAN FRANCISCO — Three companies engaged in artificial intelligence content generation told a federal judge in California that artists accusing them of stealing original works misstate copyright law and misunderstand how the programs in question work.
July 10, 2023
Dismissal Bid By Costco, Other Copyright Defendants Denied In California

LOS ANGELES — Three defendants will face a claim for damages and attorney fees in connection with infringement of an unregistered copyright in light of a ruling by a federal judge in California that the design at issue qualifies as a derivative of a copyrighted work.
July 10, 2023
Sarah Silverman, Writers Sue AI Companies For Using Copyrighted Works

SAN FRANCISCO — The actress and comedian Sarah Silverman and two writers on July 7 filed a putative class action claiming that they are the owners of copyrighted works that were acquired by OpenAI Inc. and affiliated companies and used as part of the datasets with which they trained the ChatGPT AI chatbot, in violation of copyright infringement laws and California’s unfair competition law (UCL).
July 07, 2023
Copyright Registration Issued To Visual Artist Invalidated In New Mexico

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A federal magistrate judge in New Mexico has declared invalid a copyright issued to a plaintiff that incorporates the work of another artist without attribution, following referral of the matter to the Register of Copyrights.
July 05, 2023
Judge Won’t Dismiss UCL Suit Against Company That Posted Woman’s Yearbook Photo

SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge denied a motion by an aggregator of yearbook photographs to dismiss a putative class action against it for violating California right of publicity and unfair competition laws, finding that the lone remaining plaintiff plausibly alleged that the aggregator incorporated her image into its “advertising flow” directing website visitors to make a purchase.
July 05, 2023
OpenAI Contests California Competition, Copyright Claims

OAKLAND, Calif. — Plaintiffs claiming that artificial intelligence programs produce licensed materials posted to GitHub without attribution have not shown the programs produced the code for anyone but themselves or that copyright law would not preempt their case and have not adequately pleaded their claims under the California unfair competition law (UCL), OpenAI tells a federal judge in California in a motion to dismiss an amended complaint.
July 05, 2023
Reconsideration Of Bid For Intra-District Transfer In Copyright Case Denied

OAKLAND, Calif. — A federal magistrate judge in California is standing by her recent decision to deny a defendant’s request to transfer an upcoming retrial on willfulness and statutory damages in a copyright infringement action from one district court location to another.
July 05, 2023
9th Circuit Upholds Dismissal Of Copyright Claims Against Nirvana

SAN FRANCISCO — Copyright infringement allegations by the granddaughter and sole heir of British author C.W. Scott-Giles — creator of “Upper Hell,” a drawing in a 1949 translation of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy — against the band Nirvana were properly dismissed on forum non conveniens grounds, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled July 3.
June 30, 2023
Authors Say AI Chatbot Companies Use Copyrighted Work Without Credit

SAN FRANCISCO — Two authors filed a putative class action accusing the companies that created ChatGPT and other AI chatbots of copyright infringement, unjust enrichment and violating California’s unfair competition law (UCL) by using their copyrighted works of fiction in the training datasets for their software without permission or compensation.
June 30, 2023
Publishers Ask High Court To Provide Uniformity On Copyright Damages, Limitations

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a reply brief supporting their petition for certiorari, two music publishers insist that the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals are split on whether the Copyright Act allows copyright holders to seek damages outside its three-year statute of limitations, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to supply much needed clarity in this area.
June 29, 2023
YouTube: No DMCA Requirement To Take Down Unaccused Videos Of Purported Infringer

NEW YORK — A trial court properly dismissed copyright infringement claims against it based on the alleged posting of infringing content by a third-party user of its platform, YouTube LLC tells the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in an appellee brief, asserting that any infringement liability rests solely upon the user that posted the videos, further arguing that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not mandate the removal of other videos posted by the so-called repeat infringer.
June 26, 2023
In Dispute Over Terms Of Service, Copyright Preemption, Supreme Court Denies Cert

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In its June 26 order list, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to weigh in on a case that asked whether federal copyright law supersedes a contractual provision in a website’s terms of service (TOS), which bars copying.
June 23, 2023
1st Circuit: Denial Of Fees In ‘Game Of Life’ Copyright Case Was Appropriate

BOSTON — A federal judge in Rhode Island did not abuse his discretion in denying attorney fees for prevailing defendants in a longstanding dispute over copyright ownership and termination rights to the “Game of Life” board game, the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled June 22.
June 20, 2023
Sculptor Beats Copyright Claims, But Trademark Claims Will Proceed In N.Y.

NEW YORK — The sculptor of Fearless Girl — a young girl staring down the famed Charging Bull sculpture near Wall Street in New York City — has won summary judgment in New York federal court on allegations that she engaged in direct copyright infringement when she sold a replica of Fearless Girl to a Wall Street executive who then used the work at a corporate event focused on gender diversity.
June 20, 2023
In Mixed Ruling, Copyright, Trademark Owner Prevails In Part In California

SAN DIEGO — A dispute over various trademarks and copyrighted technical drawings will proceed while allegations that other trademarks and copyrights were infringed by three defendants will be dismissed in a dispute between a security company and its former employees, a California federal judge has ruled.