Copyright law cases
A California federal court held that Actian plausibly alleged direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement based on Itron’s alleged distribution of database software beyond its licenses.
A Pennsylvania federal court held that Workers United plausibly alleged a live controversy over its Starbucks Workers United name and raised-fist logo, allowing its trademark and copyright declaratory claims to proceed.
A California federal court held that video creators plausibly alleged standing and a DMCA anti-circumvention claim based on ByteDance’s alleged bypass of YouTube safeguards to collect AI training data.
A Pennsylvania federal court awarded $400,000 in statutory damages per defendant and permanently enjoined 32 online sellers that willfully copied Nifty Home Products’ BACON BIN works.
The Third Circuit held that Westlaw headnotes are copyrightable and that a competing AI legal-research company did not fairly use them as training material.
A Connecticut federal court held that LEGO could not establish fair use as a matter of law for copying an artist’s painted jacket onto a Queer Eye minifigure, while dismissing the artist’s trade-dress claim for lack of likely confusion.
A Louisiana federal court held that Copyright Office registrations gave constructive notice that time-barred most of a former band member’s joint-ownership and royalty claims.
The D.C. Circuit vacated a Copyright Royalty Board allocation because the Board did not explain how it combined two divergent valuation methods.
A Massachusetts federal court denied a software company’s preliminary injunction because it lacked technical proof of copying or trade-secret use and waited nearly three years to seek relief.
A Florida federal court held that a Spanish streaming operator’s paid subscriptions, advertising, and substantial Florida traffic supported personal jurisdiction over Tencent’s copyright and trademark claims.
The Third Circuit held that a professor could not copyright his geometric teaching approach and that two machine-learning courses lacked substantial similarity in protected expression.
A New Jersey federal court confirmed ownership of a blood-drip necklace copyright but held that access, actual copying, willfulness, and damages remain jury questions.
A Florida federal court entered summary judgment against a design studio that could not connect the defendant to any reproduction or display of its registered architectural work.
Producers who saw 1992 releases crediting someone else as sole writer could not assert copyright ownership decades later.
The Ninth Circuit held that AI-generated code lacking attribution does not violate the DMCA unless copyright management information was removed or altered from an existing work or copy.
An Eastern District of Texas court entered default judgment, awarded $42,000, enjoined further BitTorrent infringement, and ordered deletion of unauthorized copies.
A wrestling promoter’s copyright suit was dismissed because he did not plausibly allege WWE’s access to his sequence or substantial similarity in protected expression.
A Colorado federal court awarded $7,500 in statutory damages plus fees and costs for willful use of a copyrighted photograph on Pinterest.
Australia’s Federal Court extended copyright site-blocking orders for five years and refreshed the covered piracy-site addresses.
The Second Circuit held that a diamond price list alleged to reflect expert judgment could not be denied copyright protection under the merger doctrine at the pleading stage without evidence about how its prices were created.
A Florida federal court held that Schedule A defendants prevailed after the copyright plaintiff dismissed with prejudice and awarded $39,802.50 in fees.
The D.C. Circuit upheld the DMCA exemption permitting access to medical-device software for diagnosis, maintenance, and repair as a reasoned application of copyright fair use.
On reconsideration, a California federal court granted defendants partial summary judgment because the plaintiffs had not identified one copyrighted work containing the complete selection and arrangement they sought to enforce.
The Fifth Circuit rejected the Ninth Circuit’s server test but held that framed links did not infringe because Particle did not transmit the publisher’s content, while allowing a fact-specific DMCA claim over URLs to continue.
The Fifth Circuit revived architectural copyright claims after distinguishing building-design rights from plan copyrights, but held that newly created images lacking CMI did not violate DMCA section 1202(b).
The Eleventh Circuit upheld the denial of attorney’s fees to YouTube because Athos’s losing copyright claims were nonfrivolous and reasonably motivated.
A Massachusetts federal court allowed artists’ AI derivative-work and DMCA circumvention claims against Suno to proceed while dismissing a Tennessee statutory claim.
A federal court dismissed part of an author’s AI copyright claim because generalized allegations about shadow libraries did not plausibly connect her books to the Nemotron training data.
The D.C. Circuit dismissed Music Choice’s petition, holding that the Copyright Royalty Board’s post hoc regulatory interpretation was neither a reviewable determination nor binding on the parties.
A Massachusetts federal court held that an imperfect but genuine fair-use review defeated a Section 512(f) claim over DMCA notices targeting clips of local-government meetings.
The Seventh Circuit rejected software copyright and trade-secret claims where no evidence showed copied source code and the alleged secrets were public, visible, or too generic.
The Third Circuit upheld a fudge-recipe trade-secret verdict and attorney-fee awards on unsuccessful trademark and copyright claims.
The Delhi High Court denied ANI’s interim injunction, finding that OpenAI’s storage of news works for LLM training was prima facie fair dealing under Indian copyright law.
A federal court let a DMCA subpoena proceed against an anonymous archive operator but deferred disclosure while considering a protective order.
A federal court approved Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright class settlement, finding its per-work relief, notice, claims process, and limited release fair and adequate.
A California federal court dismissed Google’s DMCA claims because anti-scraping technology must control access to copyrighted material with the copyright owner’s authority.
The Federal Circuit vacated a $12.7 million copyright damages award against the government for unauthorized copying of healthcare interoperability software, holding that courts misapplied the ‘book of wisdom’ by considering unforeseeable events and that punitive willful-infringement damages are unavailable under 28 U.S.C. § 1498(b).
Judge Corley dismissed Swedish music company Epidemic Sound’s copyright infringement suit against Meta, finding it failed to plausibly allege that Meta’s content was substantially similar to Epidemic Sound’s protected works.
Following a $102 million jury verdict in April, Manhattan federal Judge Jennifer Rochon issued a permanent injunction barring art publisher Michael McKenzie from reproducing, marketing, or selling works by the late artist Robert Indiana, including his iconic LOVE imagery.
A California federal court dismissed contributory copyright claims against eBay, holding that responding to takedown notices is sufficient and that platforms need not implement permanent staydown systems to avoid secondary liability.
The CJEU held that state-of-the-art geo-blocking prevents a “communication to the public” in a protected member state, and that the possibility of VPN circumvention does not defeat that conclusion — clearing a path for open-access digital editions of historically significant works across EU borders.
A Southern District of New York judge dismissed a freelance artist’s copyright claims that Hachette used AI to replicate his commissioned book covers for Sandra Brown novels, finding he failed to establish substantial similarity between his artwork and Hachette’s redesigned covers.
A federal judge dismissed with prejudice a Florida poet’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Taylor Swift, finding the plaintiff’s poems lack protectable expression and the works are not substantially similar.
Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed with prejudice a poet’s $25 million copyright suit against Taylor Swift, holding that the alleged overlaps — common themes, ubiquitous metaphors, and isolated phrases — amount at most to unprotectable ideas rather than original expression.
A federal judge denied summary judgment on all sides in the sprawling copyright lawsuit alleging that the dembow rhythm underlying over 1,800 reggaeton songs was stolen from Jamaican producers Steely and Clevie’s 1989 ‘Fish Market’ recording.
A California federal court dismissed all copyright claims against YouTube — without invoking the DMCA safe harbor — while allowing a pro se author’s direct infringement claims against the YouTube channel operators who narrated his book chapter-by-chapter to proceed.
Authors and publishers reached a $1.5 billion class-action settlement with Anthropic over its use of pirated book databases to train Claude, the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. The deal — covering some 482,000 titles at roughly $3,100 per work — is awaiting final court approval.
A C.D. Cal. magistrate judge partially granted Midjourney’s motion to compel, requiring the defendant studios to produce some data about their own AI use while denying broader requests as irrelevant or work-product privileged — a significant discovery development in a major AI copyright case.
An E.D. Mich. judge allowed Eight Mile Style’s direct copyright infringement claim to proceed against Meta for storing 243 Eminem compositions in its music libraries without authorization, while dismissing contributory, vicarious, and inducement claims in a ruling that applies the Supreme Court’s 2026 Cox decision.
A Northern District of California judge denied Meta’s motion to dismiss a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by adult-film producer Strike 3 Holdings, finding sufficient evidence that Meta systematically downloaded thousands of films for AI training data.