It is fairly settled law that copying scholarly articles to include in a coursepack for students in a university class is not fair use.  E.g., Princeton Univ. Press v. Mich. Doc. Servs., Inc., 99 F.3d 1381, 1385 (6th Cir. 1996) (en banc).  In a recent case, a coursepack vendor had not obtained permissions or paid royalties.  It argued that nonetheless, it had not infringed, because it merely assembled a master copy of each coursepack and made it available to students, who were the ones who pressed the “copy” button on the copy machine.  Blackwell Publ’g, Inc. v. Excel Research Group, LLC, __ F. Supp. 2d __, 2009 WL 3287403, at *1-*2 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 14, 2009).  Denying summary judgment, the district court was unimpressed by this argument.  It held that the coursepack vendor was an infringer, regardless of whose fingers pressed the “copy” button, because it assembled the master copy, maintained it, improved its quality, gave it to students to copy, owned all the copy machines and paper, and provided employees to assist the students.  Id. at *4.  It also held that the fair use analysis does not turn on who pressed the “copy” button and that the coursepack vendor’s use was, as in prior cases, not fair use.

Earlier this month, the British High Court made history by issuing an injunction via Twitter to stop an anonymous Twitter user from impersonating right-wing political blogger and lawyer Donal Blaney.  The Twitter account in question, @blaneysblarney, is named after Blaney's blog, uses a real photo of Blaney, and does not give any indication that the account is a fake or parody.  The High Court stated that this is a clear breach of Blaney's intellectual property rights and ordered the user to stop posting and immediately identify him or herself to the court via a web link form.  The Twitter user targeted by the injunction will receive a direct message with a link to the injunction from Blaney's attorney the next time he or she accesses Twitter.

Perkins Coie Associate Miriam D'Jaen published an article this month in E-Commerce Law Reports on Raggi v. Las Vegas Metro Police Dept., a case that determined whether a law enforcement personnel union was liable for posting offensive content on its Web site. 

For the second time, a federal jury in Minnesota has found that Jammie Thomas-Rasset infringed copyrights by sharing songs using Kazaa in the only music download case brought by the recording industry yet to go to trial. The jury found that Ms. Thomas-Rasset infringed the copyrights of 24 songs, and did so willfully. The jury awarded damages of $80,000 per song (the range for willful infringement is $750 to $150,000 per infringement), for a total of $1.92 million. At the first trial in 2007, the jury awarded just $222,000, so the result of this second trial is significantly worse for Ms. Thomas-Rasset.

In-house counsel, game company CEOs, and any other interested parties are invited to attend this roundtable to be held April 24, 2008, in Perkins Coie's Seattle offices.

Apparently thinking that a strong offense was the best defense to copyright infringement claims for making copyrighted music available for sharing over the Internet, the defendant counterclaimed that the plaintiffs' (music and recording companies) investigation constituted trespass, computer fraud and invasion of privacy. The court granted Plaintiffs' motion to dismiss each of the above mentioned counterclaims.

Of Counsel Lisa Oratz will speak at a Law Seminars International conference designed to provide the latest information on changes in copyright law.  The conference will take place April 14-15, 2008, in Seattle.

On October 4 - 5, 2007, Conference Co-Chair Kirk Soderquist and speakers Don Karl and Shaalu Mehra will join other leading industry professionals and practitioners discussing content, access and intellectual property issues, recent court decisions, financing, cross-border issues, the growth of casual games, M&A transactions and outsourcing agreements.

On March 29, 2007, the Ninth Circuit issued a significant ruling in Perfect 10, Inc. v. CCBill, LLC, in which the Court interpreted significant aspects of the the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("CDA"), two federal statutes critical to Internet service providers and businesses involved with the hosting of content online.  The Court's ruling has significant impacts on the following areas of DMCA and CDA law:  DMCA Takedown Notices, what it means to be "Reasonably Implement" a DMCA Policy, the ccope of Section 512(a), Direct Financial Benefit & Section 512(c), "Red Flag" Liability under Section 512(c), and CDA Section 230 & Intellectual Property Claims.

Priceline, Travelocity and Cingular Wireless each contracted with DirectRevenue LLC to deliver ads to consumers. To service its clients (including Priceline, Travelocity and Cingular Wireless), DR installed adware on millions of computers. The adware, which was undisclosed to users and difficult to remove, monitored the websites visited by the users and collected the information they typed into web forms. The NY AG filed a law suit alleging that DirectRevenue had violated New York consumer protection law, then pursued DirectRevenue's three major advertiser clients.

The U.S. Copyright Office has announced six new classes of works which are exempt from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's prohibition against the circumvention of technological measures designed to control access to copyrighted works set forth in 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1).

N.D. Cal.
Federal
Photographers' lawsuit against AOL alleging AOL's use without permission of plaintiffs' copyrighted photos..

No. 05 CV 8881 (S.D.N.Y. filed 10/19/2005)
Book publishers have sued to obtain an injunction against the "Google Library Project" on grounds of copyright infringement. Google is scanning books provided by the University of Michigan, and providing the scans to the University, while retaining copies for itself.

No. 1:05-cv-00546 (D.D.C. filed Mar. 17, 2005)
News agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) sued Google alleging copyright infringement arising from Google's posting of AFP photographs, headlines, and story leads on the Google News site, and removal or alteration of copyright information when doing so..

Intellectual Property High Court, Docket No. Heisei 17 (ne) 10049 (Oct. 6, 2005)
Intellectual Property High Court in Tokyo ruled against Digital Alliance, requiring it to pay damages to Yomiuri Online for copying Yomiuri's news headlines. The court held that while headlines do not offer much room for creativity, they are not categorically excluded from copyright protection.

392 F.Supp.2d 423 (E.D.N.Y. 2005)
Hammer entered agreement with Amazon, allowing him to sell his books on the website. An Illinois resident, Anthony Trendl, placed unfavorable reviews of Hammer's books on Amazon's website.

[2005] FCA 1242 (Federal Court of Australia)
Australian Federal Court judge Murray Wilcox held that file-sharing network Kazaa violated Australian music copyrights by authorising the copyright infringing conduct of users of Kazaa, and ordered Kazaa's owner, Sharman, to modify its software to help prevent it. Judge Wilcox observed that Kazaa did little to discourage piracy, despite knowing that most of the files swapped through Kazaa were copyrighted music.