Last month, Grokster apparently gave up. The P2P filing-sharing service Nov. 7 filed documents with a Los Angeles federal court reporting that it had reached a settlement in its lengthy legal case with the nation's largest record companies, motion picture studios and music publishers, as represented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). <br>This decision leads many experts to believe that a distributor of P2P technology with a legitimate intent not to infringe others' rights would not be liable for a third-party infringing use of the technology. But despite that perhaps being the case, the Court failed to create a bright-line test to help identify a "clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement" which, as Justice Breyer stated in his concurring opinion and as discussed in this article, could have a chilling effect on others creating or advancing file-swapping and other possibly legitimate technologies. Future litigations will necessarily turn on a case-by-case basis not as to the nature of the technology but potentially on the distributors' business plans.
Sean F. KaneLast month, Grokster apparently gave up.
The P2P filing-sharing service Nov. 7 filed documents with a Los Angeles federal court reporting that it had reached a settlement in its lengthy legal case with the nation's largest record companies, motion picture studios and music publishers, as represented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
ENJOY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO THE SINGLE SOURCE OF OBJECTIVE LEGAL ANALYSIS, PRACTICAL INSIGHTS, AND NEWS IN LawJournalNewsletters
Already have an account? Sign In Now
For enterprise-wide or corporate access, please contact Customer Service at [email protected] or call 1-877-256-2473.
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2026 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
An annual tradition continues as we present the responses to our Legalweek question. For 2026, it was "where are we with prompting"?
The volume and sophistication of work hitting law firm marketing departments is accelerating. That moves the burden from responding to being ready: ready with differentiated positioning, ready with competitive intelligence, ready to get a compelling pitch to the right client before a formal process even begins. That requires more sophisticated output, produced faster, by teams that are already stretched past capacity.
In categories where products are difficult to differentiate on performance, and that describes most of the AI industry today, customers do not choose on features, they choose on trust. Brand integrity, in those markets, is a material business asset.
The annals of copyright decisions could provide a reasonably representative catalog of what our culture has been up to over the past 200 years. A Feb. 3 decision from the Southern District of New York is a case in point. It involves a sex-trafficking conspiracy, Tweets attacking a troubled crypto firm, and a claimed transfer of copyright ownership through a restitution order in a criminal case, all over an undercurrent of competing First Amendment and victim-privacy concerns.
Matthew McConaughey secured eight federal trademark registrations covering his voice and iconic catchphrases in a novel legal strategy aimed at combating AI’s unauthorized use of his voice and likeness. The move signals an important evolution in the power dynamics between talent/brands and the companies providing generative AI tools.
