U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
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.
The Second Circuit affirmed an arbitral award giving Acorda only $16.5M of the ~$82M in post-expiration royalties it paid on an Ampyra MS drug patent, holding Brulotte/Kimble do not mandate full restitution and that New York’s Voluntary-Pay Doctrine bars recovery of royalties paid without contemporaneous protest.
The Second Circuit vacated summary judgment for a California winery in an Italian competitor’s trademark suit, holding that a 2004 TTAB decision did not have preclusive effect under B&B Hardware because the TTAB had never considered the parties’ actual marketplace usage.
The Second Circuit held for the first time that ‘misconduct’ under Rule 60(b)(3) does not include merely negligent discovery failures, and affirmed denial of Adidas’s motion to reopen a jury verdict favoring Thom Browne’s four-stripe activewear designs.
The Second Circuit revived a videographer’s copyright claims against a hip-hop news website that republished his 42-second video of Michael Jordan breaking up a fight, ruling that fair use and de minimis defenses were wrongly decided at the pleading stage.
A New York federal court dismissed Donald Trump’s $50 million copyright suit against Bob Woodward and Simon & Schuster over The Trump Tapes audiobook, holding that interview recordings are unitary works authored by the recorder, not joint works.
The Second Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to YouTube, holding that the DMCA § 512(c) safe harbor does not protect a service provider that had actual knowledge or awareness of specific infringing material — and that willful blindness to pervasive infringement can disqualify a platform from safe harbor protection.
The Second Circuit held that eBay was not liable for contributory trademark infringement arising from third-party sellers listing counterfeit Tiffany jewelry, because eBay’s general knowledge that counterfeit goods were present on its platform — without specific knowledge of particular infringing listings — was insufficient to establish contributory infringement liability.