Copyright Blog

Although Georgia State University has been embroiled in a bitter copyright controversy with academic publishers over its electronic course reserve program for more than a decade now, the case shows no signs of coming to a resolution anytime soon. In October 2018, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its long-awaited decision as the latest development in the ongoing legal saga. The lawsuit has been pending since April 2008, when Cambridge University Press, SAGE Publications, and Oxford University Press sued GSU for copyright infringement. The fight has centered on GSU’s E-Reserve practices, and its alleged failure to pay for the use of many of the publishers’ works. Instead, GSU claimed fair use and refused to adopt the policies that would placate the publishers. The case has since been decided, appealed, remanded, appealed again, and is now once more headed to the district court on remand from the 11th Circuit.

Utah Representative Mia Love sponsored a bill, introduced September 13th, that just might give VidAngel the protection they have been looking for. The Family Movie Act Clarification Act of 2018 (H.R. 6816) would give protection to movie streaming services such as VidAngel by extending the protections found in the Family Movie Act of 2005 to also cover modern streaming technologies.

On September 7, 2018, Andrew Yeckel filed suit in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota alleging copyright infringement by Jeffrey Derby and the University of Minnesota (the “University”) for use of a software program called Cats2D. Yeckel is a researcher in the field of fluid dynamics and a developer of software algorithms. He alleges that by the end of 1993 he and a partner, Ralph Goodwin, “developed a substantially complete multi-physics software program that . . . possessed all of the core elements and most of the features found in the final version” of Cats2D used by Derby and the University.

Pro se plaintiff, Cynthia Foss (“Foss”), is a Massachusetts-based artist. On July 11, 2018, Foss filed suit in The Trial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts against a number of defendants including Northeastern University (“Northeastern”). Foss alleges in her Complaint that she created a “photographic-illustrative” work of a local abbey refectory “commissioned by the Defendant Spencer [Brewery] and [St. Joseph’s] Abbey . . . .” Foss claims to have “retained all intellectual property rights” in the work, referred to in the pleading as “Refectory Long Stained Glass Wall.”

Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, P.C. v. Higbee et al - Case No. 2:18-CV-03353

GREATNURSES, LLC v. POCKET PREP INC. - Case No. 18-cv-3163 (E.D.N.Y. 2018)

In the modern world, greater notoriety in any arena may easily lead to greater risks of copyright liability via social media. Last week, on May 30, 2018, a copyright suit was filed against USA Volleyball and a member of their Team USA for what would seem to many to be average behavior on social media.

Prokos v. Sage Publications Inc., et al. Case No. 1:18-cv-04194-AT (S.D.N.Y. 2018).

The copyright infringement case between Antti Porkka and the University of South Florida (USF) and was resolved on February 16, 2018. Porkka alleged that USF made use of a “digitally identical … ‘H’ Logo” in their “Navigator” program, to help enroll “Kids and Families” in the Health Insurance Marketplace. However, USF was able to successfully defend against the suit by claiming Eleventh Amendment immunity to the suit as an arm of the state.

Last year, a coalition of multiple publishers alleged infringement of millions of works by ResearchGate (a popular networking site for academics), with a few of those publishers even going so far as to file a lawsuit against them. This case continues, with a Munich court holding their first hearing just days ago.

On April 16, 2018, the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari on a case between DRK Photo, a stock photo licensing agency, and McGraw-Hill, an academic publisher, making the September 2017 holding of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals the final word on this case.