Justia Entertainment & Sports Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff, a composer and music producer, filed a copyright suit against Sony, Razor Sharp Records, and Dennis Coles, a/k/a Ghostface Killah, to enforce plaintiff's claimed ownership rights in the "Iron Man" theme song. The district court determined that plaintiff failed to present sufficient evidence to rebut the presumption that Marvel was, in fact, the copyright owner. Therefore, the district court dismissed plaintiff's New York common law claims for copyright infringement, unfair competition, and misappropriation on the basis that those claims were preempted by the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 101 et seq. The court held that, although the district court properly determined that defendants had standing to raise a “work for hire” defense to plaintiff’s copyright infringement claim, the district court erred in concluding that plaintiff failed to raise issues of material fact with respect to his ownership of the copyright; the district court properly dismissed plaintiff’s state law claims as preempted by the Copyright Act; the court vacated the district court’s summary judgment ruling with respect to plaintiff’s Copyright Act claim and remanded for further proceedings; and the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's state law claims. View "Urbont v. Sony Music Entm't" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Leah Manzari, famous under her professional name, Danni Ashe, for her groundbreaking work in monetizing online pornography, filed a defamation suit claiming that the Daily Mail Online, an online news outlet, used a photograph of her to convey the defamatory impression that she had tested positive for HIV. The Daily Mail filed an interlocutory appeal under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, Cal. Civ. Proc. Code 425.15. The court agreed with the district court that, at this stage in the litigation, Manzari has presented sufficient evidence to move forward with her claim that the Daily Mail Online employees acted with actual malice when they published the article implying that Manzari was an HIV-positive sex worker. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's denial of the Daily Mail's motion to strike the complaint. View "Manzari v. Associated Newspapers" on Justia Law

Eberts is a film producer whose credits include Lord of War (2005) and Lucky Number Slevin (2006). After a string of failed movies, in 2009, he filed for bankruptcy. He was introduced to Elliott, an Illinois novice author who wanted to adapt his book into a movie. Eberts and Elliott formed a limited liability company. Both agreed to invest money. Eberts did not disclose his insolvency. Over the next year Elliott wired $615,000 to accounts controlled by Eberts. Eberts applied only 10% of that money toward the movie; he paid his father and bankruptcy attorney and spent the rest on personal items like art, furniture, designer clothing, and fine wines. Eberts also solicited and received a $25,000 loan from Elliott for an unrelated project and never repaid it. After Elliott discovered the scam, he filed suit. Later, Eberts pleaded guilty to seven counts of wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. 1343, and three counts of money laundering, section 1957, and was sentenced to 46 months’ imprisonment, the top of the guidelines range. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting an argument that the court failed to consider the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) sentencing factors or Eberts’s mitigation arguments, but based the sentence on unsupported facts. View "United States v. Eberts" on Justia Law

Slep-Tone has filed more than 150 suits under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1051, challenging the unauthorized copying and performance of its commercial karaoke files. In addition to the registered Sound Choice trademark, Slep-Tone claims ownership of distinctive trade dress, consisting of typeface, style, and visual arrangement of the song lyrics displayed in the graphic component of the accompaniment tracks; a display version of the Sound Choice mark; and the style of entry cues that are displayed to signal when singers should begin to sing. Slep-Tone alleges that it has used this trade dress for decades and that it is sufficiently recognizable to enable customers to distinguish a Slep-Tone track from a track produced by a competitor. The pub operators own hard drives containing allegedly illegitimate “bootleg” copies of Slep-Tone tracks and, allegedly, are improperly “passing off” the copies as genuine Slep-Tone tracks. The district court dismissed claims of trademark infringement, reasoning that the complaint did not plausibly suggest that the unauthorized use of Slep-Tone’s trademark and trade dress is likely to cause confusion among customers as to the source of any tangible good containing the tracks, a prerequisite to relief under either cited section of the Lanham Act. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Slep-Tone’s real complaint concerns theft, piracy, and violation of Slep-Tone’s media policy rather than trademark infringement. View "Phoenix Ent. Partners, LLC v. Rumsey" on Justia Law

A class of plaintiffs filed suit against the Rams in the Twenty-Second Circuit Court in the city of St. Louis, alleging state-law violations that arose out of the Rams' relocation of their professional football team to Los Angeles, California. The Rams removed the case to federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), 28 U.S.C. 1332(d). Once before the federal district court, plaintiffs moved to remand to the state court based predominantly on a lack of minimal diversity necessary to support CAFA jurisdiction. On appeal, the Rams challenged the district court's decision to remand the case to the Missouri state court. The court concluded that the Rams properly removed the case to federal court by filing a notice of removal; the district court's refusal to consider postremoval evidence effectively denied the Rams the opportunity for jurisdictional discovery to establish their claim of federal jurisdiction; and the district court's refusal to consider postremoval evidence prejudiced the Rams by limiting their ability to prove their statutory right to a federal forum. Accordingly, the court vacated the district court's order remanding the case to the Missouri state court and remanded to the district court for further proceedings. View "Pudlowski v. The St. Louis Rams LLC" on Justia Law

Flo & Eddie, a California corporation, filed suit against Sirius, a satellite and internet radio provider, claiming that Sirius violated Flo & Eddie’s rights as owner of sound recordings of musical performances that were fixed before February 15, 1972. Because the issues in this case have not been addressed by the Supreme Court of Florida, the court certified the following questions to that state court: 1. Whether Florida recognizes common law copyright in sound recordings and, if so, whether that copyright includes the exclusive right of reproduction and/or the exclusive right of public performance? 2. To the extent that Florida recognizes common law copyright in sound recordings, whether the sale and distribution of phonorecords to the public or the public performance thereof constitutes a “publication” for the purpose of divesting the common law copyright protections in sound recordings embedded in the phonorecord and, if so whether the divestment terminates either or both of the exclusive right of public performance and the exclusive right of reproduction? 3. To the extent that Florida recognizes a common law copyright including a right of exclusive reproduction in sound recordings, whether Sirius’s back-up or buffer copies infringe Flo & Eddie’s common law copyright exclusive right of reproduction? 4. To the extent that Florida does not recognize a common law copyright in sound recordings, or to the extent that such a copyright was terminated by publication, whether Flo & Eddie nevertheless has a cause of action for common law unfair competition/misappropriation, common law conversion, or statutory civil theft under FLA. STAT. 772.11 and FLA. STAT. 812.014? View "Flo & Eddie v. Sirius SM Radio" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Paul Brodeur is a well-known author in the environmental field, pointing out health dangers of the use of various electrical devices and other household items. Defendants are producers and distributors of the motion picture American Hustle. A character in the film, Rosalyn, says that she read, in a magazine article by plaintiff, that a microwave oven takes all of the nutrition out of food. Based on Rosalyn's statement, plaintiff filed suit alleging causes of action for libel, defamation, slander and false light, asserting that he had never made the quoted statement. Plaintiff further alleged that, by misquoting him, defendants suggested to the movie audience that he made a scientifically unsupportable statement, damaging his reputation. The court held that plaintiff‘s causes of action arise from defendants‘ protected activity within the meaning of the anti-SLAPP statute, Code Civ. Proc. 425.16, subd.(b)(1), where plaintiff, by his own account, is a public figure, and the views expressed in his pioneering articles on the health hazards associated with exposure to microwave radiation were plainly a matter of public interest in the 1970‘s. Further, plaintiff's claims that the government safety standard for microwave ovens was inadequate have been rejected by numerous authorities. The court also concluded that plaintiff has failed to produce admissible evidence that, as his unverified complaint alleges, he has never written an article or ever declared in any way that a microwave takes all the nutrition out of food. Accordingly, the court reversed the order denying the motion to strike. View "Brodeur v. Atlas Entm't, Inc." on Justia Law

Kevin Kendrick, as director of compliance at Alabama State University (ASU), appealed the grant of summary judgment ordering him to provide The Advertiser Company d/b/a The Montgomery Advertiser ("the Advertiser") with redacted copies of each "request for reduction/cancellation of athletic financial aid" form submitted to the director involving the ASU football program since December 15, 2014. A reporter for the Advertiser initially sent a written request for the forms to the school's media relations director spoke. The media relations director to the reporter by telephone, advising the reporter that because the forms contained sensitive personal student information, the forms would be heavily redacted. The reporter emailed the media relations director stating that he would "take just the list of names of players whose scholarships have been revoked since December [2014]." Later that day, the media relations director, under advice of university counsel, informed the reporter he could not even provide a list of names, citing privacy concerns under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA). Legal counsel for the Advertiser and legal counsel for ASU exchanged correspondence regarding whether the financial aid forms were subject to disclosure. When the parties could not agree, the Advertiser filed a declaratory judgment suit and petition for a writ of mandamus to compel the records' disclosure. The Supreme Court, after review, reversed and remanded the grant of summary judgment: "We commend the trial court for its efforts to comply with both FERPA and the Open Records Act by requiring ASU to redact the requested financial-aid forms in the manner it directed. However, the release of the redacted financial-aid forms to the Advertiser would nonetheless disclose information that is protected by FERPA, and the Advertiser did not argue that the release of the redacted financial-aid forms is authorized by any other exception in FERPA. Because FERPA prohibits the very release of the redacted financial-aid forms and because FERPA takes precedence over the Open Records Act, the director is entitled to a summary judgment." View "Kendrick v. The Advertiser Company" on Justia Law

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. 512(c), establishes a safe harbor which gives qualifying Internet service providers protection from liability for copyright infringement when their users upload infringing material on the service provider’s site and the service provider is unaware of the infringement. Plaintiffs filed suit against Vimeo alleging that Vimeo is liable for copyright infringement by reason of 199 videos posted on the Vimeo website, which contained allegedly infringing musical recordings for which plaintiffs owned the rights. In this interlocutory appeal on certified questions from rulings of the district court interpreting the DMCA, the court concluded that the safe harbor of section 512(c) does apply to pre-1972 sound recordings, and therefore protects service providers against liability for copyright infringement under state law with respect to pre-1972 sound recordings, as well as under the federal copyright law for post-1972 recordings. Therefore, the district court’s grant of partial summary judgment to plaintiffs with respect to Vimeo’s entitlement to the safe harbor for infringements of pre-1972 recordings is vacated. The court also concluded that various factual issues that arise in connection with a service provider’s claim of the safe harbor are subject to shifting burdens of proof. Because, on a defendant’s claim of the safe harbor, the burden of showing facts supporting a finding of red flag knowledge shifts to the plaintiff, and the district court appears to have denied Vimeo’s motion for summary judgment as to a number of videos on this issue based on a test that would improperly deny service providers access to the safe harbor, the court vacated the denial of Vimeo’s motion for summary judgment on that issue. The court remanded for reconsideration and further proceedings. Finally, the court rejected plaintiff's argument that the district court erred in its ruling in Vimeo’s favor as to plaintiffs’ reliance on the doctrine of willful blindness. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for further proceedings. View "Capitol Records, LLC v. Vimeo, LLC" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs and volunteers built the La Contessa, a replica of a 16th-century Spanish galleon, from a used school bus for use at the Burning Man Festival. Defendant intentionally burned the wooden structure of the La Contessa so that a scrap metal dealer could remove the underlying school bus from his property. Plaintiffs filed suit alleging that defendant violated the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), 17 U.S.C. 106(A), and committed common law conversion when he destroyed the La Contessa. The trial court granted summary judgment on their VARA claim and awarded attorneys' fees. The court held that an object constitutes a piece of “applied art”- as opposed to a “work of visual art”- where the object initially served a utilitarian function and the object continues to serve such a function after the artist made embellishments or alterations to it. Conversely, “applied art” would not include a piece of art whose function is purely aesthetic or a utilitarian object which is so transformed through the addition of artistic elements that its utilitarian functions cease. In this case, the court concluded that the La Contessa plainly was "applied art," and thus was not a work of visual art under the VARA and not eligible for its protection. Therefore, the trial court properly granted summary judgment to defendant on the VARA claim. The court also concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by excluding the testimony of two of plaintiffs' expert witnesses, nor did the trial court err in its jury instructions on abandoned property and abandonment. Furthermore, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by failing to include jury instructions on lost profits and punitive damages resulting from the destruction of the La Contessa; in admitting evidence of drug paraphenalia surrounding the La Contessa as it sat on defendant’s property; and in denying plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment on their conversion claim. Finally, the trial court did not err in awarding attorneys' fees. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Cheffins v. Stewart" on Justia Law