Copyright law cases
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.
The 1st Circuit vacates a grant of summary judgment for Ricky Martin and remands for discovery in a twelve-year copyright dispute over the 2014 FIFA World Cup song ‘Vida’ — ruling that a district court cannot race to summary judgment while denying the plaintiff any discovery at all.
The First Circuit vacated summary judgment for Ricky Martin in a 12-year copyright dispute, holding that a district court cannot resolve a copyright infringement case before any discovery when all key evidence is in the defendant’s control.
A W.D. Wash. judge denies Ravensburger’s bid for nearly $3.8 million in attorney fees after defeating Upper Deck’s copyright suit over the Disney Lorcana trading card game, finding Upper Deck’s suit was neither unreasonable nor frivolous despite its failure.
The D.C. Circuit affirmed the Copyright Office’s denial of registration for a fiber optic sculpture, holding the design lacked the requisite creativity, and rejected the artist’s arguments that Jarkesy, Loper Bright, and Shira Perlmutter’s removal required a different result.
The Ninth Circuit granted en banc rehearing in the Kat Von D tattoo-copyright case, vacating the panel opinion that affirmed a jury verdict finding no substantial similarity between a photographer’s Miles Davis portrait and a photorealistic tattoo — a signal that the full court may overhaul the circuit’s decades-old “intrinsic test” for copyright similarity.
A federal judge in San Francisco severed a copyright lawsuit by six authors against Anthropic and five other AI companies, holding there was no conspiracy among the competing LLM developers to justify joint litigation, while transferring the OpenAI claims to the New York AI copyright MDL.
In a nonprecedential ruling, the Federal Circuit affirmed that copyright infringement claims against the U.S. government must proceed exclusively under 28 U.S.C. §1498(b) and cannot be recast as Tucker Act ‘takings’ claims — a ruling arising from a pro se plaintiff’s allegation that the government used his AI dissertation without compensation.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for BrowserStack after Deque Systems repeatedly failed to disclose its damages calculations in a copyright infringement case over web accessibility software, holding that the district court properly excluded Deque’s damages evidence under Rule 37(c)(1) and that Deque failed to raise a genuine dispute on injunctive relief.
The Eleventh Circuit reversed a jury verdict, holding that 2 Live Crew member Mark Ross’s copyright termination interests were swept into his bankruptcy estate and remained there because they were never scheduled or administered — leaving the group one vote short of the statutory majority needed to reclaim their album copyrights.
A New Jersey federal court dismissed copyright claims against Netflix’s Boy Scouts abuse documentary, holding that factual content and common documentary techniques like archival footage, survivor interviews, and somber lighting are not protectable expression.
A federal court in North Carolina dismissed copyright infringement claims by a cabinetry designer, holding that custom cabinet designs registered as ‘architectural works’ are not eligible for that category of copyright protection because they are not the design of a building.
The Sixth Circuit reversed summary judgment for George Clinton and his company Thang, holding that genuine disputes of material fact exist about whether the late P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell was a co-author and co-owner of the group’s sound recordings under copyright law.
A D.C. federal judge denied motions to dismiss copyright infringement claims brought by a jury consultant against three defense attorneys who downloaded her copyrighted jury-attitude report from a public court docket and filed it in support of their own clients’ January 6 venue-transfer motions without permission or payment.
A Central District of California judge denied motions to dismiss Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros.’ copyright claims against the makers of Hailuo AI, finding that the video-generation tool’s reproduction of iconic characters like Spider-Man and Darth Vader plausibly constitutes both direct and contributory infringement.
A federal judge enters a $19.5 million default judgment against shadow library Anna’s Archive and orders global registries to disable the site’s remaining domains, marking the second massive judgment against the piracy operation in 2026.
The Third Circuit vacated the dismissal of a copyright infringement complaint against 54 foreign e-commerce defendants, holding the district court’s standing order failed to properly analyze personal jurisdiction under the purposeful availment test.
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that EU member states may require platforms like Meta to compensate press publishers for use of their news content, validating national regulators’ authority to set fair remuneration criteria and impose penalties.
A Los Angeles federal jury found Ye (Kanye West) and his companies liable for approximately $438,000 in damages for using the copyrighted instrumental track ‘MSD PT2’ without authorization in an early demo of ‘Hurricane’ performed at the 2021 Donda album listening party at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The Court of Justice of the EU ruled that member states may require online platforms to pay fair compensation to press publishers for use of news snippets, upholding Italian legislation implementing the DSM Copyright Directive.
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in a Grand Chamber decision that online platforms like Meta must provide fair compensation to press publishers when displaying snippets or previews of news articles, clarifying the scope of the EU Copyright Directive (2019/790).
A federal judge dismissed a pro se plaintiff’s copyright infringement claim alleging Warner Bros. copied his screenplay for the Joker films, finding no plausible allegation of access and no substantial similarity between the works.
The Eleventh Circuit vacated summary judgment against Trunk Archive, holding that a photographer’s retention of narrow collaboration rights does not negate the exclusivity of a licensing agency’s rights under the Copyright Act.
A federal judge denied most of NVIDIA’s motion to dismiss a class action alleging the company trained AI models on pirated books, finding that dataset download scripts ‘have no other purpose than to speed up the process of infringement’ and that the Supreme Court’s Cox ruling does not shield NVIDIA from contributory liability.
The CJEU held that a retirement home’s retransmission of satellite TV and radio signals to residents’ rooms via internal cable does not constitute a ‘communication to the public’ under EU copyright law, because residents are not a ‘new public’ beyond the original broadcast audience.
A California federal court dismissed Brandy Melville’s Lanham Act and unfair competition claims against Shein, finding they were preempted by the Copyright Act because they merely recast copyright infringement allegations as trademark claims.
The UK High Court dismissed claims by the estates of Jimi Hendrix Experience members Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, ruling that their 1966 recording agreement unambiguously assigned copyright to the producers and that prior releases barred all claims, including those related to streaming.
The UK High Court ruled that the estates of Jimi Hendrix’s bandmates Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell have no copyright ownership or performers’ property rights in approximately 40 studio recordings, finding the 1966 Recording Agreement unambiguously assigned worldwide copyright to producers.
A Manhattan federal jury awarded $102 million to the Morgan Art Foundation after finding art dealer Michael McKenzie and American Image Art produced and sold thousands of unauthorized reproductions of Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE artwork.
After prevailing in a $25.6 million copyright case over CoComelon character infringement, Moonbug sought $933K in additional fees. The court denied appellate fees — finding BabyBus’s curated appeal was objectively reasonable — but awarded $280K for extraordinary judgment enforcement work necessitated by BabyBus’s use of a shell entity to divert funds.
In a dispute over PrepMod, a COVID-19 vaccination scheduling platform, the court ruled that the developer’s copyright infringement counterclaim survives but statutory damages and attorney’s fees are barred under 17 U.S.C. § 412 because the infringement began two years before registration.
The Ninth Circuit ruled that a California federal judge applied local meet-and-confer rules too rigidly when denying a new trial motion in a willful copyright infringement case over the unauthorized DVD distribution of a Christian film.
After the Third Circuit vacated prior default judgments and remanded for reconsideration, the district court reinstated default judgment against Chinese companies selling counterfeit kitchen products, finding personal jurisdiction established through Amazon and AliExpress sales into the forum.
A federal judge in San Francisco denied Databricks’ motion to dismiss copyright infringement claims alleging the company used pirated books to train its MPT and DBRX large language models, finding the authors sufficiently tied their works to the AI models.
The Supreme Court left standing a Ninth Circuit ruling that Walmart was not directly liable for copyright infringement in product photographs uploaded by a third-party drop-ship vendor, declining to resolve a circuit split over the volitional conduct test for online platform copyright liability.
A Georgia federal court dismissed copyright infringement claims by the inventor of “key shadowing” quantum-resistant encryption technology against HyperSphere Technologies, the company to which he had assigned his patent, ruling he failed to adequately state a claim that his separately registered software code was infringed.
The Supreme Court unanimously reversed a billion-dollar verdict against Cox Communications and held that an internet service provider is contributorily liable for user copyright infringement only when it induces the infringement or sells a service tailored to infringement. Mere knowledge that subscribers are infringing is not enough.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed a $319,859 attorney’s fees award against a plaintiff who unsuccessfully claimed copyright infringement of a car dealership customer intake form, finding no abuse of discretion.