Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Stephanie Lenz sued Universal Music Corp. (“Universal”) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) for misrepresentation pertaining to a DMCA takedown notice issued by Universal in relation to a video clip that Lenz posted on YouTube depicting her child dancing to the Prince song “Let’s Go Crazy,” which Universal owns the rights to. Lenz believed her use of the Prince song constituted fair use. She alleged that Universal did not consider fair use before issuing the takedown notice and therefore had misrepresented that it had done so in the takedown notice. Universal sought a motion to dismiss the case for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Universal claimed that takedown notice procedures do not require it to consider the fair use doctrine. The Court denied the motion, holding that a copyright owner, in formulating a “good faith belief” that the use of material is not authorized, must consider the fair use doctrine prior to sending a takedown notice. However, the court also indicated that this consideration does not need to be comprehensive.

Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., No. C 07-3783 JF (N.D. Cal. Aug. 20, 2008) (order denying motion to dismiss)

In the Southern District of New York, J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels, sued publisher RDR Books for copyright infringement regarding RDR's planned publication of The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials. The principal question at issue was whether The Lexicon was a fair use of Rowling's works. In an expedited trial on the merits consolidated with a preliminary injunction hearing, the court ruled that RDR had failed to establish fair use, permanently enjoining RDR's publication of The Lexicon and awarding Rowling minimum statutory damages.

JK Rowling v. RDR Books

EMI Records sought to enjoin Premise Media Corporation (Premise) from using a clip from John Lennon’s song, Imagine, in the documentary film, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. The court did not issue guidance on the exact amount of use needed to constitute copyright infringement. Instead, the court ruled that EMI was unlikely to win on the merits of the case because the fair use defense likely applied to Premise’s use of Imagine. The court denied the injunction since granting one would cause harm.

EMI Records v. Premise Media

Some time ago I did a post on the new copyright legislation in Israel. There are many interesting things about this law, and now, at the curtsey of Prof. Niva Elkin-Koren from Haifa University, there is an unofficial English translation of the new statute available.

Here's a link to the press release. It is not my jurisdiction to cover this development - I trust you’ll hear more details and updates from Anthony and his team soon. I'd only say it looks like one of the most exiting and challenging fair use cases I’ve seen recently and a must-follow one. From the press release:

I am echoing here a post from Science Commons’ blog featuring another juicy story of apparent abuse of copyrights against a science student at the University of Michigan who posted on her blog tables and charts taken from a peer-view scientific magazine and quickly received a cease and desist letter from the publisher.

Alexander Ponosov is a teacher in a small Russian village who was prosecuted for violating Microsoft’s intellectual property rights by installing illegal versions of Windows operating system and Word software (see Balazs Bodo’s post here). Ponosov claimed to his defense that the 12 new computers at issue were delivered already with the unlicensed software installed.

Yesterday I finished my draft of my preliminary search results for primary and secondary authority covering the application of the fair use defense to 'borrowed' video clips in documentaries.