Filmmaker Overcomes Supreme Court Setback to Pursue North Carolina for Stealing Footage — Eriq Gardner has the full story about the somewhat remarkable development in Allen v. Cooper, which involves a long running dispute between videographer Frederick Allen and the state of North Carolina over video and images of the shipwreck of one of Blackbeard’s pirate ships. After last year’s Supreme Court decision holding that Congress could not prophylactically abrogate state sovereign immunity using the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, the district court has granted a motion for reconsideration, allowing Allen to revive his claims against the state on alternative grounds.
Embed Copyright Cases Could Multiply as Server Test Faces Siege — Bloomberg Law’s Kyle Jahner discusses the growing split in courts regarding the “server test”, a 9th Circuit doctrine that limits implication of the public display right online to circumstances where a copy of the work resides on the defendant’s own server. As Jahner notes, an increasing number of courts outside the 9th Circuit have rejected the server test as inconsistent with the Copyright Act.
Pirated-Entertainment Sites Are Making Billions From Ads — “Websites and apps featuring pirated movies and TV shows make about $1.3 billion from advertising each year, including from major companies like Amazon.com Inc., according to a study. The piracy operations are also a key source of malware, and some ads placed on the sites contain links that hackers use to steal personal information or conduct ransomware attacks, according to the online safety nonprofit Digital Citizens Alliance and the anti-piracy firm White Bullet Solutions Ltd. While law enforcement officials have sought to stop some of the online criminality, the groups identified at least 84,000 illicit entertainment sites.”
8th Circuit revives copyright dispute over house floor plans — Blake Brittain writes, “The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday reinstated copyright claims brought by home designer Charles James against real estate companies that allegedly made floor plans based on one of his designs without permission. A copyright law that protects pictures or ‘pictorial representations’ of architectural works from infringement claims doesn’t apply to floor plans, U.S. Circuit Judge Morris Arnold said.”
Apple Files Appeal After Partly Settling Corellium Copyright Dispute — “A string of docket entries filed this week reveal that Apple Inc. and defendant Corellium LLC have partly ended their dispute over whether Corellium illegally copied Apple’s technology by creating a ‘virtual’ version of Apple devices and unlawfully trafficking a product used to circumvent security measures. Though the parties reached a settlement concerning Apple’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claim and Corellium’s counterclaims, the terms of which were not made public, Apple has appealed three copyright infringement claims as to injunctive relief only.”