Posts tagged as:

Copyright

Defendant Choses a New Trial in Minnesota File Sharing Case

February 1, 2010
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When I wrote about the trial judge’s remittitur order in the Jamie Thomas case last week, I didn’t mention that a legal aspect of remittitur is that the defendant may accept it, or reject it and demand a new trial. I now understand that the defendant in this case has not accepted the judge’s remittitur,

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“$2 Million for Stealing 24 Songs for Personal Use is Simply Shocking” Says Minnesota Federal Judge, Issuing Remittitur Order

January 23, 2010
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Out of more than 30,000 cases filed against downloaders by the record companies only two end-user download cases have gone to trial and judgment: the Tenenbaum case in Boston, and the case against Jammie Thomas-Rassett in Minnesota. In the second case, the jury awarded the copyright owners $2 million for downloading (and allegedly distributing) 24

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Tenenbaum Final Judgment

December 8, 2009

Final judgment in Sony v. Tenenbaum entered by Judge Nancy Gertner today.  The 30 day appeal clock starts to run.  Should be interesting to see what the First Circuit does with this one, although I suspect that the betting is heavy in favor of quick affirmance. A few choice quotes from Judge Gertner’s opinion, which

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First Circuit: Judge Gertner, You Do Not Have the Authority to Permit Webcasting in Your Courtroom

April 17, 2009

The First Circuit’s decision upholding the RIAA’s challenge to Judge Gertner’s decision to permit webcasting of a motion hearing in the RIAA v. Tenenbaum case was issued on April 16, 2009, very shortly after oral argument. The First Circuit, interpreting a D. Mass. Local Rule, held that U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner’s interpretation of the

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First Circuit Affirms Preliminary Injunction in Copyright Case

April 13, 2009

Here is the First Circuit’s recent decision upholding a preliminary injunction in a copyright case  out of D. Puerto Rico.  The sole issue on appeal was the holding on substantial similarity.  The products were stuffed animals, specifically, frogs.  Or, more specifically, the Puerto Rican tree frog, the Coqui.   I’ve tried to find a picture of

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"Copyright in the Age of YouTube"

April 8, 2009

Great article by Steven Seidenberg in the February 2009 ABA Journal on the legal tensions between user-generated content sites (UGC, in the lingo) and the content owners under the “notice and take down” regime established by the DMCA. Interesting fact from the article: On YouTube alone ten hours of video content are put online every

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First Circuit Reverses Judge Young in Situation Management Case

March 23, 2009

Are business training materials sufficiently original to be protected by copyright law? The answer, of course, is “it depends.” First and foremost it depends on the materials themselves, but it also depends on the judge. In Situation Management v. ASP, Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge William Young thought the training materials created by the plaintiff,

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Rambus Files Its Opposition to Cert.; Gatehouse/New York Times Copyright Case Settles

January 28, 2009

[Update: the FTC did file a reply brief.  Link here] All the briefs are in on the FTC petition for cert in its antitrust case against Rambus, (unless the FTC decides to file a reply brief, which is unlikely to change things much). I’ve added the Rambus opposition to the Rambus Group page on scribd.com,

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"Talkin 'Bout My [Internet] Generation" and Gatehouse Media says, "Give Us A Break Judge, the Registration is in the Mail"

January 16, 2009

Some interesting goings ons on the copyright front in D. Mass. are worth a brief mention. First, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner has ruled that proceedings in the RIAA’s case against Joel Tenenbaum, alleging illegal downloading, may be “webcast” by the Berkman Center. Whether the actual trial will be webcast is undecided as yet,

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