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

Mealey's Copyright

April 16, 2024
Panel: Ad Use Of Flag, Plea To Buy American Is Not Literally False

DENVER — A request for damages in connection with the use of a construction equipment company’s copyrighted photographs in alleged false advertisements that implored consumers to buy a competitor’s American-made products was rightly rejected by a federal judge in Oklahoma, the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled.
April 16, 2024
Music Industry Seeks Expedited Review Of AI Infringement Action

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Music publishers asked a federal judge in Tennessee for the status of their request for a preliminary injunction enjoining Anthropic PBC’s training of its artificial intelligence, saying expedited review of the motion and details on when the court plans to hold oral arguments will allow for an efficient presentation.
April 12, 2024
Activision Must Face ‘Warzone’ Trademark Counterclaim In California

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California on April 11 lifted a previously entered stay of discovery in litigation over “Call of Duty: Warzone” and the “WARZONE” trademark, which Activision Inc. stands accused of infringing by a counterclaimant, in denying the videogame maker’s motion for judgment on the pleadings.
April 11, 2024
Architect To 5th Circuit: Promo Materials Without Notice Infringed Copyright

NEW ORLEANS — A license agreement with a developer specified that any publication of its copyrighted works must include its copyright management information (CMI), an architectural firm tells the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in its reply brief, insisting that this applied to promotional materials created by third parties at the developer’s behest.
April 10, 2024
Popular Instagram User Wins Leave To Amend Copyright Claims Against Travel Company

WASHINGTON, D.C. — An Icelandic woman with more than 1 million Instagram followers defeated a travel marketing company’s motion to dismiss copyright infringement claims on April 9, with a District of Columbia federal judge instead granting the plaintiff leave to file a third amended complaint.
April 10, 2024
Court Erred On Timing, Logic In OpenAI Trademark Dispute, Party Says

SAN FRANCISCO — No evidence supports the conclusion that the OpenAI mark acquired secondary meaning by September 2022, and the court’s holding otherwise ignores that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied it that status as late as April 2023, a competitor for the mark says in a motion for reconsideration.
April 09, 2024
Contract Claims Partly Preempted By Copyright, N.Y. Federal Judge Finds

NEW YORK — A plaintiff embroiled in litigation with talk radio host John Batchelor over podcast distribution rights lost its bid to return the dispute to New York state court on April 8, with a federal judge concluding that because portions of the case are preempted by federal copyright law, “policing the line between the preempted and non-preempted portions of these claims will be an ongoing task that will continue through trial,” thereby warranting the exercise of supplemental jurisdiction.
April 05, 2024
Estate Settles Suit Over Artificial Intelligence George Carlin Comedy Video

LOS ANGELES — George Carlin’s representatives settled copyright and privacy claims against the entities responsible for creating an artificial intelligence presentation featuring his voice and likeness, with the defendants agreeing to stipulated consent judgment enjoining the creation of or otherwise using the comedian’s image, voice or likeness.
April 04, 2024
Judge: California Plaintiffs Can’t Intervene In New York OpenAI Copyright Suits

NEW YORK — California plaintiffs lack sufficient interest in New York copyright infringement cases involving similar but different defendants and claims arising from the training of artificial intelligence, a federal judge in New York said in denying a motion to intervene.
April 04, 2024
Appeals Court Weighs In On Software Copyright Case For 3rd Time

CINCINNATI — A summary judgment in favor of infringement defendants by a federal judge in Michigan was upheld April 3 by the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, in its third ruling in a longstanding dispute over copyright protection for computer code.
April 04, 2024
California Federal Judge Offers Glimpse At Hurdles In TikTok IP Row

SAN FRANCISCO — In advance of a planned April 5 hearing on a motion to dismiss copyright infringement and false advertising claims leveled against TikTok Inc. and others, a federal judge in California has directed the video sharing app to be prepared to defend its position that the registration requirement in federal copyright law extends to copyrights registered abroad.
April 02, 2024
7th Circuit Won’t Reinstate Pro Se Copyright Claims Against Amazon

CHICAGO — A federal judge in Indiana correctly rejected a copyright infringement action against Amazon.com Inc. and a company that helps authors self-publish their works, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled, because the complained-of conduct was authorized by a license.
April 01, 2024
Collectibles Firm To 3rd Circuit: Hockey Sculpture Has No Protectable Elements

PHILADELPHIA — A Florida-based sports memorabilia company asks the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in its appellee brief to affirm a lower court’s finding that its hockey puck piece containing melted rink ice does not infringe the appellant’s puck-shaped item because the latter work has no copyrightable, nonutilitarian features.
March 29, 2024
Panel Reinstates ‘Tiger King’ Copyright Case On 1 Of 8 Videos

DENVER — Findings by a federal judge in Oklahoma that seven videos featured in “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” are non-actionable works-made-for-hire will stand, but Netflix Inc. and the producer of the documentary series must face copyright infringement allegations with regard to an eighth video, which was wrongly declared a fair use, the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled.
March 27, 2024
Panel: Evidence Supports Finding That Copyright Action Was Retaliatory

NEW YORK — A decision by a federal judge in New York to award the author of a novella upon which “Mafietta” was based $44,496.05 in attorney fees was upheld March 26 by the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which said there was “a sufficient basis in the record to support” findings that a copyright infringement lawsuit by the producers of the film “was frivolous and retaliatory.”
March 26, 2024
AI Prompts Are Merely ‘Copyright-Laundering Facility,’ Artists Claim

SAN FRANCISCO — Artificial intelligence prompts used to create images are a “copyright-laundering facility designed to produce low-cost knockoffs of copyrighted images,” the plaintiffs argue in four wide-ranging oppositions to motions to dismiss filed in California federal court.
March 26, 2024
Rapper To 7th Circuit: Evidence Shows His Song Was Sampled, Infringed

CHICAGO — Hip-hop artist Eddie Lee Richardson, known professionally as Hotwire, tells the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in his opening appellant brief that a trial court erred in finding that he did not establish that French Montana’s hit 2012 song “Ain’t Worried About Nothin’” (AWAN) directly sampled and, therefore, infringed the copyright in his song “Hood Pushin Weight” (HPW).
March 25, 2024
Publishers Ask 2nd Circuit To Find Internet Archive’s EBook Lending Infringing

NEW YORK — The “wholly manufactured” practice of “controlled digital lending” in which Internet Archive (IA) digitizes books and lends them online “is radical and unlawful,” book publishers tell the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in their appellee brief, seeking affirmance of a trial court’s finding that the practice infringed their copyrights.
March 22, 2024
Copyright Defendants Again Awarded Fees, This Time By 7th Circuit Panel

CHICAGO — A little over two months after their successful defense on appeal of a $1.5 million attorney fee award from an Illinois federal judge, an investment banking company and its managing director won $260,219.25 in fees and costs incurred in the appeal, despite the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals finding that the factors for such an award are in “equipoise.”
March 22, 2024
New York Times: Copyright Violations, Not Hacking, At Heart Of ChatGPT Case

NEW YORK — OpenAI Inc. knew that ChatGPT would produce material protected by copyright, not only because of well-publicized incidents where artificial intelligences output protected works but because it was told as much and discussed the issue internally, the New York Times Co. (NYT) says in opposing a motion to dismiss.
March 21, 2024
Accrediting Group Certifies 1st Large Language Model Trained On ‘Clean’ Data

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nonprofit Fairly Trained on March 20 announced certification of the first large language model (LLM) trained with a consent-based approach to data, saying the step proves that artificial intelligence (AI) can be trained while treating creators fairly and ethically.
March 20, 2024
4th Circuit Stands By Contributory Copyright Liability Findings For ISP

RICHMOND, Va. — The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on March 19 denied dual petitions for rehearing or rehearing en banc, leaving in place a panel decision one month earlier that vacated a $1 billion award for vicarious copyright infringement by an internet service provider (ISP) while also upholding findings that the ISP is liable for contributory infringement.
March 19, 2024
Plaintiffs Fire Back In UCL, Copyright Case Involving Google AI Training Data

SAN FRANCISCO — Individuals enjoy a property right in their personal information, and a complaint alleges unlawful and unfair conduct sufficiently enough for claims under all three prongs of the California unfair competition law (UCL), plaintiffs in a copyright and privacy class action accusing Google LLC of “wide-scale data theft” in the training of its artificial intelligence tell a federal court in opposing dismissal.
March 19, 2024
MosaicML AI Model Comes Under Fire In Authors’ Lawsuit

SAN FRANCISCO — A trio of authors sued MosaicML, the provider of tools facilitating the training of artificial intelligence, and its parent company, claiming that they benefitted from the improper copying of potentially hundreds of thousands of copyrighted works.
March 15, 2024
Panel Upholds Dismissal Of Copyright Claims Per Extraterritoriality Principle

SAN FRANCISCO — A bid by the owner of a copyrighted widget for reinstatement of its infringement case against a foreign entity has failed at the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which rejected the appellant’s assertion that a California federal judge failed to consider its claims under the correct statute.