Copyright
Fair use, the scope of protection, and the rights of authors — copyright doctrine tested by machine learning, mass digitization, and the music industry.
-
Bartz v. Anthropic: Transformative Training, Unforgivable Acquisition
Judge Alsup held that training a large language model on books is 'exceedingly transformative' fair use — while refusing to extend that blessing to the pirated library that fed it. The $1.5 billion settlement that followed shows where the real exposure lies.
-
Kadrey v. Meta: A Fair-Use Win That Reads Like a Plaintiffs' Brief
Two days after Bartz, Judge Chhabria also found AI training to be fair use — but went out of his way to say the result reflected a failure of advocacy, not a vindication of the practice. His 'market dilution' theory is the doctrine to watch.
-
Thomson Reuters v. Ross: The First Refusal of Fair Use in the AI Era
Before the generative-AI rulings, a Delaware court rejected fair use for using copyrighted material to build an AI legal-research tool — and pointedly distinguished the software cases the technology industry had relied upon. Its reach is narrower than its reputation.
-
Structured Asset Sales v. Sheeran: The Deposit Copy and the Limits of Owning a Groove
The Second Circuit affirmed that Ed Sheeran's 'Thinking Out Loud' does not infringe 'Let's Get It On,' reaffirming that a common chord progression and harmonic rhythm are not protectable — and that pre-1978 song copyrights are bounded by the deposit copy.
-
Hachette v. Internet Archive: The End of 'Controlled Digital Lending' as a Fair-Use Theory
The Second Circuit held that scanning print books and lending the digital copies — even one-to-one — is not fair use. The decision turns on a narrowed conception of transformative use and the primacy of the licensing market.
-
Authorship Without an Author: Thaler v. Perlmutter and the Human Floor of Copyright
The D.C. Circuit held that the Copyright Act requires a human author, foreclosing registration of a work generated autonomously by an AI system — and the Supreme Court has now declined to disturb that conclusion.
-
When Purpose Eclipses Meaning: Warhol v. Goldsmith and the Narrowing of Transformative Fair Use
The Supreme Court's 7-2 decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith (May 18, 2023) reframed fair use's first factor, holding that a commercial use sharing the same purpose as the original photograph does not become 'transformative' merely by adding new artistic meaning.
-
Where Ideas End and Expression Begins: The Ninth Circuit Revives Tangle's Sculpture Suit Against Aritzia
In Tangle, Inc. v. Aritzia, Inc., the Ninth Circuit reversed a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal, holding that the selection and arrangement of otherwise unprotectable sculptural elements can be protected and that kinetic, manipulable works are sufficiently 'fixed.'
-
The Server Test Survives: Hunley v. Instagram and the Public Display Right for Embedded Images
In Hunley v. Instagram (9th Cir. 2023), the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed the Perfect 10 'server test,' holding that embedding an Instagram photo does not 'display a copy' and so cannot anchor direct or secondary infringement liability.
-
When a Bundle Beats the Blanket: The MLC's Section 115 Royalty Fight With Spotify
Inside Mechanical Licensing Collective v. Spotify, the S.D.N.Y. dispute over whether adding audiobooks turns Premium into a royalty-discounted 'bundle' under the Section 115 compulsory mechanical license.
-
Can a TV Buyer Enforce the GPL? SFC v. Vizio Heads Toward a Landmark Trial
A December 2025 summary-adjudication order in Software Freedom Conservancy v. Vizio narrows the case but leaves the central question intact: whether an ordinary purchaser can enforce open-source copyleft as a third-party beneficiary on the eve of an August 2026 trial.
-
After Cox v. Sony: The Supreme Court Rebuilds the Wall Around ISP Safe Harbors
In a unanimous March 2026 judgment, the Supreme Court reversed the $1 billion verdict against Cox Communications, holding that knowledge alone cannot make an internet provider a contributory infringer — reshaping how the DMCA's § 512 safe harbor matters.
-
Stripping the Byline: The § 1202(b) Ruling in The Intercept Media v. OpenAI and the SDNY CMI Split
Judge Rakoff let The Intercept's DMCA § 1202(b)(1) copyright-management-information claim against OpenAI survive dismissal while tossing the § 1202(b)(3) claim, splitting from Raw Story v. OpenAI on standing and reshaping CMI litigation in AI-training cases.
-
Honest Mistakes of Law Survive: Unicolors v. H&M and the Scienter Floor of § 411(b)
In Unicolors v. H&M (2022), the Supreme Court held that a copyright registration is not invalidated by an inaccuracy the applicant did not know was inaccurate — whether the error was one of fact or law.
-
When the Author Comes Back: Horror Inc. v. Miller and the Limits of Work-for-Hire
The Second Circuit's 'Friday the 13th' ruling held that screenwriter Victor Miller was an independent contractor, not an employee, letting his § 203 termination notice stand and reclaiming the screenplay.
-
Warner Chappell Music v. Nealy: The Supreme Court Unshackles Copyright Damages From the Three-Year Window
In Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy (May 9, 2024), a 6-3 Supreme Court held that a copyright owner with a timely claim may recover damages for infringement no matter how long ago it occurred — while pointedly leaving the validity of the discovery rule itself undecided.
-
What Survives the Filter: The Ninth Circuit's 'Top Gun: Maverick' Decision and the Limits of Substantial Similarity
In Yonay v. Paramount, the Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Paramount over 'Top Gun: Maverick,' holding that a film sharing a real Navy program with a 1983 magazine article copies facts, not protected expression.
-
Four Authors, One Vote Short: The Eleventh Circuit, 2 Live Crew, and the Fragility of the Termination Right
In Lil' Joe Records v. Wong Won (11th Cir. 2026), the court held that a 2 Live Crew member's copyright termination interest fell into his Chapter 7 bankruptcy estate, leaving the group one author short of the majority needed to reclaim five albums.
-
The Predicate-Act Doctrine Meets Mirrored Servers: Motorola Solutions v. Hytera and the Limits of U.S. Copyright Abroad
The Seventh Circuit's July 2024 decision in Motorola Solutions v. Hytera shows how the presumption against extraterritoriality and the predicate-act doctrine cabin recovery of foreign copyright damages — even amid blatant source-code theft — while the Defend Trade Secrets Act reaches worldwide sales.
-
All In or Not at All: Pandora v. ASCAP and the Limits of Partial Withdrawal
The Second Circuit held that ASCAP's consent decree forbids music publishers from selectively pulling their performance rights out of the collective for digital services like Pandora.
-
The Dancing Baby's Rule: Lenz v. Universal and the § 512(f) Duty to Consider Fair Use
The Ninth Circuit held that a copyright owner must consider fair use in good faith before sending a DMCA takedown notice — and that failing to do so can expose the sender to liability for misrepresentation under § 512(f).
-
The Pose Belongs to No One: Rentmeester v. Nike and the Thin Copyright in a Photograph
The Ninth Circuit held that Nike's iconic Michael Jordan 'Jumpman' photograph did not infringe Jacobus Rentmeester's earlier image, because copyright protects a photograph's expression of a pose — not the pose itself.
-
Not a Place You'll Go: Dr. Seuss v. ComicMix and the Limits of the Mashup
The Ninth Circuit held that a Star Trek-Seuss mashup was infringement, not parody, drawing a hard line between transformation and clever copying.
-
One Application, Thousands of Photographs: Alaska Stock v. Houghton Mifflin and Group Registration
In Alaska Stock v. Houghton Mifflin (9th Cir. 2014), the court upheld a stock agency's database registrations that did not name every photographer or title, deferring to three decades of Copyright Office practice on registering collections.
-
Filtering the Code: How Computer Associates v. Altai Brought the Idea-Expression Line to Software
Computer Associates v. Altai adapted the idea-expression dichotomy to computer programs through its abstraction-filtration-comparison test, filtering out elements dictated by efficiency, external constraints, and the public domain.
-
Feltner v. Columbia Pictures: The Jury's Role in Setting Statutory Damages
The Supreme Court held that the Seventh Amendment guarantees a jury trial on statutory copyright damages — including the amount itself — reshaping how infringement awards are decided.
-
A Performance Is Not a Work: Garcia v. Google and the Author Behind the Camera
The en banc Ninth Circuit rejected an actress's claim to copyright in her brief filmed performance, holding that an individual acting contribution does not create a separately ownable work.
-
The Law Belongs to Everyone: Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org and the Government Edicts Doctrine
In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org (2020), a divided Supreme Court held that the annotations in Georgia's official annotated code are uncopyrightable government edicts because they are authored by legislators acting as legislators.
-
Conduct, Not Speech: The D.C. Circuit Upholds DMCA § 1201 in Green v. DOJ
A cryptographer and a hardware hacker argued that the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules censor lawful research and tinkering; the D.C. Circuit held that § 1201 regulates conduct and survives the First Amendment.
-
Instance, Expense, and the Heirs' Lost Recapture: Marvel Characters v. Kirby
The Second Circuit held that Jack Kirby's foundational 1958-1963 comics were works made for hire under the 1909 Act's 'instance and expense' test, defeating his children's § 304(c) termination notices.
-
Disassembly as Fair Use: Why Sega v. Accolade Still Governs Reverse Engineering
The Ninth Circuit held that copying object code to study a program's unprotected functional elements can be fair use, securing reverse engineering as a tool for interoperability and competition.
-
Capitol Records v. ReDigi: Why You Cannot Resell a Song the Way You Resell a Record
The Second Circuit held that ReDigi's 'used' digital music marketplace necessarily made unauthorized reproductions, so the first-sale defense — which reaches only distribution — could not save it.
-
Spanski v. Telewizja Polska: A Foreign Broadcaster's Stream Lands Inside U.S. Copyright
The D.C. Circuit held that a foreign broadcaster who directs infringing video-on-demand performances to viewers in the United States commits a domestic violation of the Copyright Act.
-
Elementary, After All: Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate and the Public-Domain Character
Judge Posner held that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, as drawn in the pre-1923 stories, are free for anyone to use, rejecting the estate's 'complex character' copyright theory.
-
Climbing Down: Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin and the End of the Inverse Ratio Rule
The en banc Ninth Circuit's decision upholding the 'Stairway to Heaven' verdict, confining old compositions to their deposit copies, and abolishing the inverse ratio rule.
-
Ink on Screen: Solid Oak Sketches v. 2K Games and the Copyright Status of Tattoos in Video Games
A Southern District of New York court held that realistically depicting NBA players' tattoos in NBA 2K was non-infringing on three independent grounds — de minimis use, implied license, and fair use.
-
Storage With Access: UMG v. Shelter Capital and the Reach of the § 512(c) Safe Harbor
The Ninth Circuit held that Veoh's automated transcoding and playback functions fell within 'storage at the direction of a user,' and that general knowledge of infringement on a video platform does not defeat the DMCA safe harbor.
-
Infringement Without a Remedy: Eight Mile Style v. Spotify and the Estoppel Trap
A Tennessee court found Spotify infringed Eminem's compositions by streaming them without mechanical licenses, then barred the claim entirely under equitable estoppel for the publisher's strategic delay.
-
When the Eye Decides: Cariou v. Prince and Fair Use for Appropriation Art
The Second Circuit held that appropriation art can be transformative fair use even without commenting on the original—then left five works in doubt.
-
Itar-Tass v. Russian Kurier: Splitting Ownership and Infringement Across Borders
The Second Circuit held that the law of the country of origin governs copyright ownership while U.S. law governs infringement occurring on American soil.
-
A Menu Is a Method: How Lotus v. Borland Put Command Hierarchies Beyond Copyright
The First Circuit held that the Lotus 1-2-3 menu command hierarchy is an uncopyrightable 'method of operation' under Section 102(b), a ruling left standing by an evenly divided Supreme Court.
-
Bots, Warden, and the Two Halves of § 1201: MDY Industries v. Blizzard
The Ninth Circuit split the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions in two, holding that § 1201(a) protects access independently of infringement — and that a World of Warcraft cheat maker violated it.
-
Designs on a Uniform: Star Athletica and the New Test for Separability
In Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands (2017), the Supreme Court replaced a tangle of separability tests with a single statutory inquiry, holding that surface decorations on cheerleading uniforms can be copyrighted as pictorial works.
-
A Precondition, Not a Jurisdictional Bar: Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick Untangles § 411(a)
In Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick (2010), a unanimous Supreme Court held that copyright registration under § 411(a) is a claim-processing precondition, not a limit on federal subject-matter jurisdiction — saving a class settlement that swept in unregistered works.
-
Control, Intent, and the Limits of Collaboration: Aalmuhammed v. Lee
The Ninth Circuit denied joint-authorship status to a key creative consultant on 'Malcolm X,' holding that significant contribution is not enough without control and a shared intent to be co-authors.
-
A Series of Abstractions: Learned Hand and the Line No One Can Fix in Nichols v. Universal
In Nichols v. Universal Pictures, Judge Learned Hand articulated the abstractions test for separating unprotectable ideas and stock characters from protectable expression, the most enduring tool in nonliteral copyright analysis.
-
Recording Artists at the Termination Gate: Waite v. UMG Recordings
A Southern District of New York court let recording artists pursue § 203 termination of their master recordings but refused to certify a class, holding the work-for-hire defense too individualized to resolve collectively.
-
Concord Music v. Anthropic: Why the Music Publishers Lost Their Bid to Halt AI Training
A federal judge denied the music publishers a preliminary injunction against Anthropic over Claude's reproduction of song lyrics, finding their proposed order overbroad and their claimed harm unproven — even as a guardrails stipulation quietly reshaped the dispute.
-
ABC v. Aereo: When 'Looks Like Cable' Beat the Engineering
The Supreme Court held that Aereo's array of dime-sized antennas publicly performed broadcast television, treating the service as functionally identical to a cable system despite its individualized architecture.
-
Lightly Sketched: Why The Moodsters Lost to Inside Out in Daniels v. Disney
The Ninth Circuit applied its Batmobile test to deny copyright in 'The Moodsters' and rejected the creator's idea-submission claim against Disney's Inside Out.
-
Infringing a Feeling? Williams v. Gaye and the "Blurred Lines" Verdict
The Ninth Circuit's decision affirming that 'Blurred Lines' infringed Marvin Gaye's 'Got to Give It Up' and the enduring fear that copyright can now protect a song's groove and vibe.
-
Petrella v. MGM: Why Laches Cannot Shorten the Copyright Damages Window
The Supreme Court held that the equitable defense of laches cannot bar a copyright damages claim filed within the Act's three-year limitations period — a decision that reoriented how delay is policed in infringement remedies.
-
The New York Times v. OpenAI: Why a Manhattan Judge Let the Output-Infringement Claims Stand
Judge Sidney Stein largely denied OpenAI and Microsoft's motions to dismiss, keeping alive the theory that ChatGPT's outputs and the conduct of its users can infringe — a sharp contrast with how California courts have treated similar allegations.
-
Golan v. Holder: When Congress Pulled Foreign Works Back Out of the Public Domain
The Supreme Court upheld Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, holding that Congress may restore copyright to foreign works that had already entered the U.S. public domain.
-
Whitewashed Overnight: Castillo v. G&M Realty and VARA's Protection for Art of 'Recognized Stature'
In the 5Pointz appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed a $6.75 million award and held that even temporary aerosol art can attain 'recognized stature' protected against willful destruction under the Visual Artists Rights Act.
-
The 44% Raise the D.C. Circuit Sent Back: Johnson v. Copyright Royalty Board
How the D.C. Circuit vacated the Copyright Royalty Board's Phonorecords III streaming mechanical rate hike for inadequate notice and unexplained reasoning, and what the remand meant for songwriters.
-
How Red Must the Flag Be? Viacom v. YouTube and the Specificity of § 512(c) Knowledge
The Second Circuit held that both actual and 'red flag' knowledge under the DMCA must point to specific, identifiable infringements — but revived Viacom's case by reading willful blindness and 'right and ability to control' back into the statute.
-
Andersen v. Stability AI: The Theory That Diffusion Models Can 'Contain' the Works They Trained On
A federal court let visual artists' direct and induced copyright claims against AI image generators proceed on the theory that protected works may persist inside the model itself — a holding that reframes how courts think about training data.
-
No Certificate, No Courthouse: Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com and the Registration Precondition to Suit
In Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com (2019), a unanimous Supreme Court held that a copyright owner cannot sue for infringement until the Register of Copyrights has acted on the application — not merely received it.
-
The Method Belongs to the World: How Baker v. Selden Drew Copyright's First Boundary
Baker v. Selden held that copyright in a book explaining a bookkeeping system protects the explanation, not the system itself, founding the idea-expression dichotomy later codified at 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).
-
"Get a License or Do Not Sample": Bridgeport's Bright Line for Sound Recordings
How the Sixth Circuit's Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films created a near-absolute rule against unlicensed sampling of sound recordings—and why the Ninth Circuit later refused to follow it.
-
Who Owns the Statue? CCNV v. Reid and the Birth of the Agency Test
The Supreme Court's unanimous 1989 ruling rejected control-based shortcuts and held that common-law agency principles decide whether a creator is an employee or an independent contractor for work-made-for-hire purposes.
-
One Voice Is Enough: Scorpio Music v. Willis and the Joint Author's Solo Termination
A Southern District of California ruling held that a co-author of 'Y.M.C.A.' who separately granted away his share could terminate that grant alone, without his co-writers' consent.
-
Parody Earns Its Keep: Campbell v. Acuff-Rose and the Birth of Transformative Fair Use
How the Supreme Court rescued 2 Live Crew's send-up of 'Oh, Pretty Woman' and rewrote the four-factor fair-use test around transformation.
-
The Garage-Door Case That Tethered the DMCA to Infringement: Chamberlain v. Skylink
The Federal Circuit refused to let a copyright owner use § 1201 as a tool to lock out an aftermarket competitor, holding that anti-circumvention liability requires a nexus to actual copyright infringement.
-
To the Batmobile: How DC Comics v. Towle Made a Car a Copyrightable Character
The Ninth Circuit held that the Batmobile is a copyrightable character, building a three-part test that now governs character protection for film and television.
-
Originality Over Effort: Feist v. Rural and the Constitutional Floor for Copyright
In Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service (1991), the Supreme Court held that a garden-variety white-pages directory lacked the 'modicum of creativity' the Constitution requires, burying the 'sweat of the brow' doctrine for good.
-
Kirtsaeng v. Wiley: How 'Objective Reasonableness' Anchors Copyright Fee-Shifting
On the second trip to the Supreme Court, Kirtsaeng resolved how district courts should weigh a losing party's litigating position when awarding attorneys' fees under § 505 of the Copyright Act.
-
Kirtsaeng v. Wiley: First Sale Goes Global and the Gray Market Comes Home
The Supreme Court read 'lawfully made under this title' geographically neutral, holding that § 109's first-sale doctrine exhausts the distribution right in copies manufactured abroad.
-
Interoperability Is Not Infringement: The Ninth Circuit Rewires Derivative-Works Law in Oracle v. Rimini Street
The Ninth Circuit's December 2024 decision holds that software built to interoperate with a copyrighted program is not a derivative work without 'something more' — actual copying of protected expression.