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June 04, 2026
ATLANTA — In a matter of first impression, an 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that a late rapper who was a member of hip-hop group 2 Live Crew lost ownership of copyright interests in the group’s earliest recordings to his bankruptcy estate upon declaring bankruptcy, reversing a Florida federal judge’s finding that the rapper maintained copyright interests.
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June 02, 2026
ST. LOUIS — An Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel determined on June 1 that it lacked jurisdiction to consider a Minnesota federal judge’s entry of sanctions against a man accused of copying business databases and selling data derived from them through a series of web entities; the panel held that the sanctions order was not a final appealable judgment.
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June 01, 2026
Over the last month, authors and other rights holders filed five federal lawsuits targeting artificial intelligence companies. In one of the most recent actions, Cable News Network Inc. (CNN) sued Perplexity AI Inc. claiming that the company’s bot unlawfully scrapes news stories and that its “answer engine” then outputs repackaged but nearly verbatim versions of original, copyrighted works.
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June 01, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Authors who opted out of a previous class action settlement that Anthropic PBC reached with authors over its use of their works to train its Claude large language model sued the company in a California federal court, alleging direct and contributory copyright violations and removal of copyright management information.
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May 29, 2026
LOS ANGELES — Companies that operate an artificial intelligence (AI) image and video generating service must face a suit alleging copyright infringement brought jointly by Disney Enterprises Inc., Universal City Studios Productions LLP and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. after a California federal judge rejected arguments that the film entities failed to state a claim.
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May 29, 2026
CINCINNATI — A Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel reversed a Michigan federal judge’s summary judgment ruling in favor of the leader of Parliament-Funkadelic and a related company, holding that genuine questions of fact remain as to whether the defendant entities expressly repudiated a late former band member’s claims of copyright co-ownership interests.
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May 29, 2026
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A federal judge in North Carolina on May 28 dismissed a cabinet designer’s suit against homeowners and construction entities accused of infringing a copyrighted cabinet design, holding that the cabinet does not qualify as an “architectural work” despite being registered as such with the U.S. Copyright Office.
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May 28, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge in the District of Columbia denied motions from three law firms to dismiss copyright infringement complaints against them filed by a jury consultant who prepared a jury attitude report in support of two criminal defendants accused of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, finding that the consultant adequately pleaded infringement to survive dismissal.
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May 27, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that a Michigan federal judge wrongly barred a technology company from seeking unjust enrichment damages against Ford Motor Co. and wrongly vacated a jury’s award of breach of contract damages; the panel also affirmed a finding that Ford had misappropriated the company’s trade secrets related to software used in vehicle development.
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May 27, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Kentucky mother is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider her arguments rejected by a Kentucky federal judge and the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that the fair-use exception of the Copyright Act permitted her to request a copy of a mental health survey that was to be administered to students at a Kentucky public high school.
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May 20, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania federal judge did not properly analyze whether alleged infringers’ shipments of products with copyrighted art to Pennsylvania established personal jurisdiction before dismissing an artist’s copyright infringement suit against dozens of foreign entities, a Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held May 19, vacating the dismissal.
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May 18, 2026
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — A Pennsylvania federal judge granted a photographer’s motion for summary judgment on claims that a dog-breeding entity infringed a photo of a dog standing on a scale by using it without permission on the breeder’s website, rejecting the breeder’s affirmative defense of fair use.
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May 08, 2026
OAKLAND, Calif. — Authors in an artificial intelligence copyright case may proceed with their contributory infringement claim but not their vicarious infringement claim, a federal judge in California said in citing a March 25 U.S. Supreme Court ruling while partially denying a motion to dismiss filed by Nvidia Corp.
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May 04, 2026
DENVER — In a reversal from a March 2024 opinion, a 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed an Oklahoma federal judge’s entry of summary judgment in favor of Netflix Inc. and another production company, now agreeing with the judge that video clips from a funeral used in the documentary television series “Tiger King” constituted a fair use.
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May 01, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge in California granted a motion from Shein Distribution Corp. and affiliates to dismiss unfair competition and false designation of origin claims brought against them by another fashion entity, finding that the claims were preempted by federal copyright law because they were based only on the alleged unauthorized use of copyrighted images.
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April 29, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Crocs Inc.’s petition for panel rehearing or rehearing en banc, leaving in place a panel’s January opinion that held that the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) did not abuse its discretion by granting a limited exclusion order (LEO) and not a general exclusion order (GEO) to Crocs against defaulting defendants accused of importing products that infringed or diluted its trademarks.
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April 27, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge incorrectly determined at the pleading stage that a hip-hop news outlet’s reproduction of a video of basketball player Michael Jordan breaking up a fight constituted fair use, a Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held, finding that the news outlet “potentially provided consumers with a substitute work that obviated the need to seek out (and pay for) the video” shot by a plaintiff-appellant videographer.
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April 24, 2026
NEW YORK — Music companies successfully allege that YouTube imposed at least some technological measures designed to protect content posted on the site, though the exact nature of the restrictions will need to determined on a more full record, a federal judge in New York said in denying a motion to dismiss an artificial intelligence circumvention case.
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April 23, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled April 22 that a California federal judge too rigidly applied local rules when denying a new trial motion from defendant entities found liable for willful copyright infringement through their distribution of DVDs of a Christian film; the panel’s opinion resolves three consolidated appeals from the case.
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April 23, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — Direct copyright infringement claims in an artificial intelligence case will proceed after a federal judge in California concluded that plaintiffs adequately tied the copying of their protected works to MosaicML Inc.’s and Databricks Inc.’s training of large language models (LLMs).
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April 22, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In two opinions, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel found that the evidence did not support a California federal jury’s determination that defendant medical entities in a sprawling dispute over a cosmetic penile implant device had misappropriated trade secrets; the panel found that all alleged trade secrets had been publicly disclosed in prior art patents.
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April 21, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on April 20 rejected an artist’s petition for a writ of certiorari, leaving in place a partly split Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals opinion that reversed a California federal jury’s finding that Walmart Inc. had infringed copyrighted photos of the artist’s jellyfish-shaped lamps; the high court refused to hear arguments suggesting that the Ninth Circuit improperly considered the sufficiency of trial evidence while weighing a pretrial motion.
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April 21, 2026
ATLANTA — Reversing a Florida federal judge’s dismissal, an 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that an entity associated with the late Mexican surrealist artist Frida Kahlo established personal jurisdiction for Lanham Act and other claims against the artist’s grandniece because she is alleged to have sent cease-and-desist letters with false claims of trademark ownership into Florida on her own behalf.
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April 21, 2026
NEW YORK — A quartet of news providers has not shown that automated outputs of an “answers engine” powered by artificial intelligence and retrieval-augmented generation constitute copyright violations or that using tags identifying the source material violates trademark rights, Perplexity AI Inc. tells a federal judge in New York.
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April 10, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — A Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel agreed with a Pennsylvania federal judge that an online research platform was likely to succeed on its fair use defense against claims accusing it of infringing copyrighted building codes that have been incorporated into the International Building Code; the panel pointed to a 2023 opinion by the District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appealsinvolving the same plaintiff-appellant that similarly found fair use.