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In Dr. Seuss Enterprises L.P. v. ComicMix LLC, 983 F.3d 443 (2020), a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held in December that ComicMix’s illustrated book combining elements of several Dr. Seuss children’s books with characters, themes and other features of the popular sci-fi series Star Trek was not a fair use of the Seuss material from which it had admittedly been “slavishly” copied. The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the district court’s determination of fair use and grant of summary judgment to ComicMix. (See our May 24, 2019 article in the New York Law Journal, “‘Mash-Up’ of Dr. Seuss and Star Trek Held Fair Use,” discussing the district court’s decision.) The Ninth Circuit found that all four fair use factors set forth in §107 of the Copyright Act favored Dr. Seuss Enterprises. In particular, the Ninth Circuit found that ComicMix’s use was not transformative and that it would cause significant market harm to the plaintiff.
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New York Federal District Court Dismisses Investor Lawsuit Over Tencent Music IPO
By Stan Soocher
In December 2018, China-based titan Tencent Music Entertainment launched a U.S. initial public offering (IPO). But the IPO resulted in an investor’s class action suit alleging TME violated federal securities laws. This is part of a trend of increasing such securities suits against foreign companies, though the U.S.
Legal Triggers In NFT Crypto Craze
By Michael A. Mora and Alaina Lancaster
The latest cryptocurrency craze has litigators closely watching from the sidelines. Buyers of digital non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are ready to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes more, but when disputes start to hit the scene, litigators said there is little to no case law as precedent.
Supreme Court on APIs and Fair Use
By Scott Graham
Google didn’t get an answer from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) it copied from Sun Microsystems were copyrightable. But it got just about everything else it could have hoped for in a decision that ended its 11-year copyright clash with Sun's successor, Oracle.
2d Cir. Issues Two Notable Copyright Fair Use Decisions
By Tom McParland
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently issued decisions in two closely watched copyright fair use cases involving photographs. In the…
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