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Mealey's Copyright

  • January 06, 2026

    6th Circuit Affirms Fees To Morissette In Frivolous IP Claim Suit

    CINCINNATI — A Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a Michigan federal judge’s order that a pro se plaintiff-appellant must pay singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette and a related entity more than $3,000 in attorney fees and costs, finding that the appellant abandoned his challenge to attorney fees and failed to show that he should be allowed to amend his complaint accusing Morissette of stealing the songs on her record “Jagged Little Pill” from him.

  • January 06, 2026

    OpenAI Can’t Escape Production Of 20M Chat Logs, Judge Affirms

    NEW YORK — A federal judge in New York affirmed two rulings by a magistrate judge requiring OpenAI entities to produce 20 million ChatGPT logs after finding that she didn’t ignore privacy concerns or potentially less burdensome production options.

  • January 06, 2026

    Von D Wins On Davis Tattoo Infringement Appeal, Despite 9th Circuit Reticence

    SAN FRANCISCO — In a lengthy per curiam opinion, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ultimately held that a California federal jury’s finding that celebrity tattoo artist Katherine Von Drachenberg did not infringe a photo of jazz musician Miles Davis in a tattoo under the circuit’s intrinsic test of substantial similarity, while two panel judges authored concurring opinions that criticized the intrinsic test standard.

  • January 05, 2026

    9th Circuit: Paramount Didn’t Copy Original ‘Top Gun’ Article For 2022 Sequel

    SAN FRANCISCO — Makers of the 2022 sequel film “Top Gun: Maverick” did not breach a 1983 agreement by not crediting the sequel to the author of an article on which the original 1986 film was based, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel agreed with a California federal judge in a Jan. 2 opinion.

  • January 05, 2026

    Judge: Clothing Maker Can’t Show It Owns Copyrights To Photos Of Products

    CHICAGO — An Illinois federal judge denied a clothing maker’s request to reconsider the judge’s decision to grant summary judgment of noninfringement to defendant clothing makers, holding that the plaintiff’s arguments about newly discovered evidence directly contradicted arguments it made in opposition to summary judgment.

  • January 02, 2026

    Judge: FUTSA, Not Copyright Act, Preempts Delivery App Company’s Conversion Claim

    TAMPA, Fla. — In a dispute over trade secrets and source code associated with a food delivery smartphone application, a Florida federal judge held Dec. 31 that while the plaintiff entity’s claim of conversion was not preempted by the Copyright Act, it was displaced by the Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act (FUTSA).

  • January 02, 2026

    5th Circuit: No New Fees In Fight Over Band’s Music Uploaded To YouTube

    NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed in full a Texas federal judge’s decision in a dispute over copyrights associated with a band from Mexico, seeing no abuse of discretion in the judge’s decision to deny posttrial attorney fees beyond a jury’s $50,000 award for a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

  • December 23, 2025

    Authors Sue Top 6 AI Companies For Copyright Infringement

    SAN FRANCISCO — Six authors deviated from the more traditional class action route and instead collectively sued the six major artificial intelligence companies alleging that they willfully and knowingly stole high quality copyrighted works from shadow libraries required to train AI products.  The authors filed their complaint on Dec. 22 in California federal court.

  • December 19, 2025

    2nd Circuit: Hague Convention Bars Email Service To Accused ‘Baby Shark’ Copiers

    NEW YORK — A New York federal judge rightly dismissed China-based defendants from an intellectual property suit brought by the company behind the children’s viral song “Baby Shark,” a Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled Dec. 18; the panel agreed with the judge on a matter of first impression for the appeals court that email service to entities in China is not permissible under the Hague Service Convention.

  • December 17, 2025

    Country Musician, AI Music Company Debate Copyright Claims

    NEW YORK — An independent country musician and artificial intelligence music company Uncharted Labs Inc. have briefed a motion to dismiss in a case challenging whether the company’s Udio.com music generation site violates copyright and Tennessee law.

  • December 17, 2025

    Parts Of News Publisher’s Copyright Suit May Proceed, MDL Judge Says

    WILMINGTON, Del. — The federal judge in New York overseeing multidistrict litigation involving OpenAI Inc. and related entities dismissed a news publisher’s technological circumvention claims based on a robots.txt file and unjust enrichment claims but said some of the publisher’s copyright action can proceed.

  • December 16, 2025

    Judge: Tax Business Owner Is Co-Author Of Copyrighted Tax Software

    CHICAGO — A Chicago federal judge granted a plaintiff tax appeal business’ motion for summary judgment, agreeing that the business could not have infringed copyrighted tax assessment software because the company’s founder was a co-author of the software.

  • December 11, 2025

    2nd Circuit: Figures In Lego IP Row Fall Under Earlier Injunction

    NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel again held Dec. 10 that it lacked appellate jurisdiction to consider a Connecticut federal judge’s ruling that a toy company’s redesigned figurines still ran afoul of a preliminary injunction previously ordered in an intellectual property dispute with Lego A/S and affiliated Lego entities (collectively, Lego).

  • December 09, 2025

    Recap Of Some Major Rulings And Developments In AI-Copyright Cases In 2025

    It has been more than five years since a news organization filed the first lawsuit challenging the training of artificial intelligence using copyrighted material.  Since that time, there have been dozens of similar suits filed, the creation of multidistrict litigation, certification of a class action, several ground-breaking rulings and one potentially precedent-setting settlement.  This story looks at some of the biggest developments in the litigation in 2025 and where those cases stand now.

  • December 04, 2025

    Magistrate Judge Affirms OpenAI Must Produce 20 Million ChatGPT Chat Logs

    SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI Inc. defendants must produce 20 million ChatGPT outputs in a consolidated copyright action against it, a magistrate judge in New York affirmed in denying a motion for reconsideration after finding the evidence relevant and proportionate.

  • December 04, 2025

    Bloomberg Must Face Book Copyright Owners’ Suit, Judge Says

    NEW YORK — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and others successfully allege copyright ownership and that two Bloomberg companies used their protected works as training material for their artificial intelligence, a federal judge in New York said in denying a motion to dismiss.

  • December 04, 2025

    Magistrate Judge Orders OpenAI To Produce Dataset-Deletion Communications

    NEW YORK — OpenAI Inc. entities waived any attorney-client privilege protecting communications by offering shifting positions that resulted in the disclosure of some of the purportedly privileged reasons for the deletions and by putting their state of mind at issue, a federal magistrate judge in New York said in ordering production of the evidence.

  • December 04, 2025

    Google Accuses AI Copyright Plaintiffs Of ‘Litigation-By-Ambush’

    SAN JOSE, Calif. — Google LLC opposed a motion to certify a class action and asked a federal judge in California to strike the allegations with prejudice as a sanction for artificial intelligence copyright plaintiffs’ “midnight switch” of proposed classes and subclasses.

  • December 03, 2025

    Preliminary Injunction Left Intact In IP Row Over Game Emulation Software

    SAN DIEGO — A California federal judge denied video game emulation software developers’ motion to reconsider a decision to grant a video game publisher’s request for a preliminary injunction in a dispute over trademarks and copyrights related to the video game EverQuest, finding that the defendants “essentially argue the Court was wrong in its decision” without further evidence.

  • December 02, 2025

    High Court Hears Arguments On ISP’s Liability For Users’ Infringement

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Dec. 1 from an internet service provider (ISP) that contends that it can be found liable for customers’ copyright infringement through piracy only if it committed a culpable act, while a group of record labels and music publishers told the justices that the ISP’s continuous providing of service to internet protocol (IP) addresses of known infringers constitutes liability under the material contribution standard.

  • December 01, 2025

    Stay Of Injunction In Battle Over Copyright Register Post Deferred By High Court

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order on Nov. 26 deferring until two other cases are decided an application by President Donald J. Trump and others to stay an interlocutory injunction in a case over the president’s ability to remove Shira Perlmutter from her position as the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office.

  • November 26, 2025

    Supreme Court Seeks Response In ‘Paradise’ AI Art Copyright Case

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — One day after distributing a case for conference, the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 26 asked for a response from the federal government in a case in which a man claims that lower courts erred by finding that his artificial intelligence-generated artwork was not entitled to copyright protections.  The man previously asked the court to stay the case while courts decide whether Shira Perlmutter can continue to serve as head of the U.S. Copyright Office.

  • November 25, 2025

    Card Company Appeals Copyright Dispute That Ended In $39,000 Offer Of Judgment

    SEATTLE — A trading card company said it will appeal multiple rulings in a copyright dispute involving a former employee who left to develop a trading card game for a competitor after a Washington federal judge, who previously dismissed most of the claims against the former employee and competitor and ruled to exclude testimony from an expert on damages, awarded the company $39,000 in accordance with an accepted offer of judgment.

  • November 20, 2025

    Judge: Designer Not Barred From Seeking Statutory Damages, Fees In IP Case

    PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania federal judge held that a plaintiff designer is not barred from seeking damages and fees against a clothing company that contracted with another designer to use a pattern that allegedly infringed the plaintiff’s copyrighted design, finding that a four-year gap between the defendant designer’s alleged infringement and the clothing company’s use of the pattern on pajamas constituted separate acts of alleged infringement after a substantial cessation.

  • November 20, 2025

    Judge Relates Suits Alleging Salesforce Pirated AI Training Material

    SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California granted a joint stipulation relating two actions accusing Salesforce Inc. of pirating copyrighted books to train its artificial intelligence.