Joe Satriani has accused the band Coldplay of copying his song in a pending lawsuit filed last year.  Satriani says that Coldplay’s song “Viva La Vida” borrows substantially from his song “If I Could Fly.”  “Viva La Vida” won a Grammy for Song of the Year for 2008. Satriani’s song, released in 2004 was intended as a love letter to his wife and reportedly took him ten years to write.

Satriani is a Grammy nominated guitarist that has released a dozen solo albums selling in excess of ten million copies.  Dubbed “Satch” by his fans, he has played with several rock legends including Mick Jagger, Sammy Hagar and Alice Cooper.  Just in case you have been living under a rock, Coldplay is a British alternative rock band that has produced four major label albums and won seven Grammy awards.  They have sold in excess of 50 million records.  They have eschewed endorsement and licensing deals (with the exception of an iTunes commercial) and to their credit, Coldplay claims they give 10% of their profits to charity. 

Satriani says it was his fans that brought the songs’ similarities to his attention.  After Coldplay’s latest record was released, Satriani’s inbox was flooded with emails telling him he was being “ripped off”.  He said: “The second I heard, I knew…I felt like a dagger went through my heart.”  And Satriani is not the only one who feels cheated.  Cat Stevens claims that Coldplay infringed his song “Foreigner Suite”.  And it doesn’t stop there.  Creaky Boards, an indie rock band from New York, claim “Viva La Vida” is a ripoff of their song, “The Songs I Didn’t Write”.  Cat Stevens says he will wait and see how Satriani’s lawsuit plays out before taking any action.  Creaky Boards seem to have relished the publicity their band is getting.  After all, being compared to Coldplay can’t be such a bad thing for a relatively unknown band from Brooklyn. More...

On July 15th, the Copyright Office published a Federal Register Notice proposing to amend Copyright Office regulations governing mandatory deposit of electronic works that are published in the United States and available only online.

Under the present regulations the Copyright Office practice has been to exempt from the deposit requirement all electronic works that are published only online.  These regulations are applicable to Section 407 of the Copyright Act, which provides that the owner of a copyright in a work published in the United States is required to deposit two complete copies of the best edition of the work with the Copyright Office for the use or disposition of the Library of Congress.  A deposit under Section 407 must be made within three months after such publication.  Failure to deposit the copies does not affect copyright in the work, but it may subject the copyright owner to fines and other monetary liability if a demand for deposit of the work is made by the Register of Copyrights and the owner fails to comply with the demand.  As a result, in practice, these works are not normally submitted to the Copyright Office unless and until a demand is made by the Office.

Section 407 should not be confused with Section 408.  Section 407 applies to all copyrighted works that are not registered with the Copyright Office.  Section 408 applies to only those works that are registered with the Copyright Office and requires any work that is registered to be deposited.  More...

As noted earlier in this blog, two weeks ago the Supreme Court denied cert in the case of Cable News Network, Inc. v. CSC Holdings, Inc. (“Cablevision”).  That order leaves in place Cablevision’s appellate victory, allowing it (for now) to continue offering its “remote DVR” service to cable customers, without payment of additional royalties for the storage and delivery of that programming.  The result was somewhat surprising to experts, and many had expected the Supreme Court to hear the case.  But more than anything else, the result signals a looming battle over secondary liability principles – principles that the plaintiffs chose not to put into play in the Cablevision case – and how the landmark Universal Pictures v. Sony (“Betamax”) case will be applied to similar digital services.

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A couple of weeks ago, I reported on a database publisher who successfully brought a case against a company that tried to copy the database and sell it as its own.  Now there's a very similar case in a different jurisiction that reached a similar conclusion.  Could the tied finally be turning for U.S. database publishers?  Are they finally getting the protection they so desperetaley deserve, and need?  You decide.  

 

The facts are as follows.  Health Grades develops and distributes ratings of health care providers, such as hospitals, by reviewing various sources of publicly available information and using its own proprietary methodologies to rate these providers using its “1-3-5 Star” rating system.  It publishes the ratings on its website, which is accessible by anyone who first agrees to a click-through agreement. This agreement allows the licensee to view the information and to copy, store and print a single copy of material on the site so long as it is for noncommercial use only and is not re-distributed to others. 

In instances where a third party wants to use the ratings for commercial use or to re-distribute the information to others, Health Grades has reached a separate agreement with the third party.  The revenue from these additional license agreements are what keeps Health Grades in business.

 

Robert Woods Johnson University Hospital (“RWJ”) is a hospital in New Jersey whose employees accessed the Health Grades website (more then 200 times), agreed to the click-through license agreement, and copied and distributed the ratings Health Grades gave to RWJ in numerous press release and articles in violation of the terms of the license agreement.More...

Yesterday, thanks to the video being mentioned on sites like boingboing, slashdot and several other sites, the trailer for SIIA's new anti-piracy video, titled Don't Copy That 2 (DCT2), went viral with over 30,000 hits in one day.   It even made its way to France.   Not surprisingly, the comments are quite similar to what we saw with the original Don't Copy That Floppy video about 17 years ago... the usual rants and anti-copyright, anti-corporate invective, mixed in with some thoughtful arguments defending the rights of content creators and enjoying excerpts from the video.  Many people can't seem to figure out whether the video is a parody or serious or something in between.  I guess they'll have to wait for the actual video to be released later this summer to find out.  For those of you unfamiliar with the history of the video or why, 17 years later, we decided to make a sequel, check out my prior blog.

I posted here on June 5 that author J.D. Salinger filed a lawsuit seeking damages for copyright infringement and an injunction against the writer, publisher and distributor of a sequel to "Catcher In The Rye" .... "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye."

 

On July 1, 2009, U.S. District Court judge Deborah Batts issued a preliminary injunction barring the defendant from manufacturing, publishing, distributing, shipping, advertising, promoting, selling or otherwise disseminating “60 Years Later, “  the unauthorized sequel to J.D. Salinger’s novel, “Catcher in the Rye” in the United States.  Her opinion is posted here.

The Judge held Mr. Salinger was likely to succeed on a claim of copyright infringement after weighing, in detail, the factors for a fair use defense.

In a 37 page decision, the Judge first determined Mr. Salinger held a valid copyright for the “Catcher” and moved to a discussion of the fair use defense (17 USC Sec. 107).  The decision is a great resource for the history and line of cases related to fair use.More...

In Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc., the US District Court for the Northern District of California denied defendant Power Ventures's motion to dismiss Facebook's copyright infringement claim arising out of Power Ventures's unauthorized harvesting of data from Facebook user accounts.  Power Ventures operates a website designed to integrate various social networking or email accounts into a single portal. After a user provides his or her user names and passwords to Power Ventures's service (power.com), it takes this access information to “scrape” user data from those accounts.  Subsequently, the user can log on to Power.com to view the data culled from Facebook and any other social networking sites or email accounts.

Power Ventures commenced licensing negotiations with Facebook to authorize its data scraping activity.  After negotiations broke down, Facebook brought suit claiming, among other things, that Power Ventures's actions violated the Copyright Act.  Power Ventures moved to dismiss, arguing that Facebook does not have a copyright interest in the content posted by its users.

The court agreed with Power Ventures that Facebook does not have a copyright on user content, which ultimately is the information that Power Ventures software seeks to extract.  The court stated further, however, that Power Ventures's making a copy of a user’s entire Facebook profile page in order to collect that user content,  could constitute infringement of Facebook’s copyright interest in the collection and arrangement of the user content in the form of the profile page.  Accordingly, the court denied Power Venture's motion to dismiss Facebook's copyright infringement claim.

This case may provide further ammunition to site owners in their attempts to thwart unauthorized collection of site user data, even where the site user has granted permission and the site owner does not actually own the data.

Database publishers have often had a difficult time protecting their database against unscrupulous people who come along and copy it, place their own name on it and make money off it.  The courts have often been reluctant to protect databases as copyrighted works and, in the rare instance where they do, the courts usually afford them such thin protection as to allow just about any copying so long as it does not result in an identical copy.  As a result, database owners have been somewhat reluctant to attempt to enforce what rights they may have in their database in the courts.

But every so often a database publisher comes along who feels they have a good enough case to justify the risk of bringing their case before the court.  SaleTraq is just such a publisher.

SalesTraq compiles, arranges and owns a database of about 17,000 different models of residential properties in the Las Vegas area.  The database contains not only the usual information one might find in a database of residential properties (such as floor plans, measurements, features and location), but also includes the properties’ key attributes as determined by SalesTraq.  SalesTraq distributes the database to its customers through a fee-based subscription that is accessible through the SalesTraq website, and by providing the database on CD-ROM or DVD to its subscribers on a monthly basis. More...

Late last week, the poster child for P2P piracy, Jammie Thomas (who now goes by Jammie Thomas-Rasset) was found liable for copyright infringement … again. 

 

The first time, which occurred in a U.S. District Court in Minnesota back in 2007, a jury found her liable to a tune of $220,000.  She and her attorneys thought this was an injustice of the highest magnitude so they appealed. 

 

Their wish was granted and they got a new jury (in the same court) to consider whether Thomas would be liable and if so, for how much.  This new jury thought the first jury got it wrong.  They thought $220,000 was much too small an amount for Ms. Thomas to pay for her illicit actions and they came back with a verdict for $1.92 million.  Yes, that’s right, almost $2 million for infringing 24 songs.  I bet that $220,000 verdict is looking pretty good to Ms. Thomas and her attorneys right about now.

 

So what does all this mean?  Well, first off to fully understand what this means you need to know a little something about the copyright law.  Under the copyright law, plaintiffs may be awarded statutory damages ranging from $750 to $150,000 for each work infringed.  Ms. Thomas infringed 24 works so the damages could have been as low as $18,000 or as high as $3.6 million.  In reaching a verdict of $220,000, the first jury decided on an award of just over $9,000 per work.  The second jury’s award was $80,000 per work infringed – which is just about the mid-point in the possible range of statutory damages. More...

Author J.D. Salinger, at 90 years-old, filed a lawsuit this week  seeking damages for copyright infringement and an injunction against the writer, publishers and distributor of a sequel to "Catcher In The Rye" .... "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye."

A character very much like an aged Holden Caulfield,  at 76 years old, an escapee from a retirement home and identified as ``Mr. C" takes on New York, like the young Holden in "Catcher In The Rye."  J.D. California, the author of the sequel never refers to the character as Holden Caulfield, only as "Mr. C." 

The complaint asserts the sequel infringes Salinger's copyright rights in both his novel and the character Holden Caufield.  The sequel and the original both begin with Holden leaving an institution and end with he and his sister at the carousel in Central Park.   The complaint goes on to allege the bulk of the book has Holden doing, seeing and talking to the same folks as in the original while he is in New York.

The sequel is currently available for purchase in the UK and is scheduled for a Fall 2009 release in the US.

Can J.D. California successfully defend an action for copyright infringement?  The Wall Street Journal blog has a great outline of the defense here.  I struggle with the thought that this sequel could be fair use.  It is really going to hinge on whether or not this new work is transformative of the original.  I posted earlier this year on the status of fair use and transformation in the Shepard Fairy case.