Final Updates from Three Cases
Weisblat v. John Carroll University
In February 2023, we first published a post describing the Complaint by Gina Weisblat ("Weisblat") against her former employer, John Carroll University ("JCU"). Weisblat claims that JCU appropriated and reused a grant application she wrote in order to apply for other grants without her permission.
Since that post, JCU filed an Answer to the complaint alleging that JCU retains the copyright for the grant application under the Work for Hire doctrine, as Weisblat was an employee of JCU at the time of writing the application. After the Answer, the parties underwent a discovery period, at the conclusion of which the attorney representing Weisblat withdrew from the case due to "an irreconcilable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship" according to the Motion to Withdraw. Following Weisblat hiring a new attorney, JCU filed a Request for Summary Judgement under the claims that the grant application was non-copyrightable and that JCU retains the copyrights to the application.
The court's eventual Opinion addresses these concerns, explaining that the Complaint repeatedly states that JCU stole the "ideas and concepts" of her grant application, something that is explicitly not protected by copyright. The Court also discusses the actual instance of copying, which amounted to roughly 200 words on the JCU application that were taken from Weisblat's application. To those words, the Court applied the Feist originality and creativity requirement as well as the Merger Doctrine and decided the copied portion fails to exhibit even a minimal amount of creativity, and thus granted the motion for summary judgement in favor of JCU.
Kev & Cooper LLC v. Gladwell Education LLC
In a previous post we introduced this case between two companies, Kev & Cooper ("Cooper") and Gladwell Education ("Gladwell"), who both create educational rugs for children. Cooper alleged that Gladwell copied one of their rug designs, and Gladwell responded with a motion to dismiss based on the fact that the rug was designed by one Omer Copur, a co-founder of Kev & Cooper LLC. Gladwell's argument was that the work made for hire doctrine is meant for employees and contractors, and thus would not apply to founding member of a company. If the doctrine were not applicable, Cooper would not own the copyright and would have no grounds for an infringement suit. Additionally, the copyright registration depicts the work as a work for hire, and if that were inaccurate then the copyright would potentially be invalid, which would also necessitate dismissing the suit.
The Court responded in an Opinion that Copur had given a statement that at the time of creating the rug, his understanding and intention was that the design was a work made for hire. Even if this situation did not fully fit within the standard work made for hire framework, Copur intended for Cooper to own the copyright. In regards to the potentially misfiled copyright registration, the Court decided that the prima facie evidence of the copyright registration was sufficient to overcome a motion to dismiss, and discovery would be required to determine if the registration was intentionally filed inaccurately. Given both of those facts, the Motion to Dismiss was denied.
This case is a rare example where the parties settled out of court but asked for the court to arbitrate the fulfillment of the settlement, and thus a transcript was filed with full details of the settlement. The settlement included Cooper paying Gladwell $20,000 in return for Gladwell giving Cooper all of the intellectual property rights for the rug at issue, as well as handing over all the profits from previously sold rugs and the standing inventory of rugs already created. The Court agreed to keep the suit open for 120 days to ensure that the transaction was completed without incident on either side, and it was closed 120 days later. Neither side admitted any liability in the matter.
Watts et al v. St John Central Academy
In March 2023, Samantha Watts filed a lawsuit on behalf of her daughter, who is referred to as "SW" to preserve her privacy. In 2019 SW received permission to create a logo for St. John Central Academy ("SJCA"), for which she was not compensated. She proceeded to file a registration for a copyright for the logo, and sued SJCA for allegedly infringing use of the logo on promotional material, official communications, and a large mural in the school gymnasium. After our initial post, SJCA filed a Motion to Dismiss based on the fact that SW filed a copyright registration application but the copyright office never accepted her application, meaning SW does not have a valid copyright registration. Before SW could file a response, the parties settled out of court and filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal.