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Content-Licensing Payment Dispute Turns On Existence of Fiduciary Relationship

By Stan Soocher
March 01, 2024

A fiduciary relationship occurs when one party places trust and confidence in another party to in good faith carry out the obligations owed to the first party. New York case law holds that fiduciary relationships typically don't arise from "conventional business relationships," such as in royalty payor-payee settings.

A recent New York federal court decision in a dispute between a broker that sublicenses program content and a broadcaster that sublicensed content from the broker considered the interaction of contract language and extra-contractual elements of the parties' relationship to determine whether a fiduciary relationship existed. VideoElephant Ltd. v. Blake Broadcasting LLC, 21-CV-0503 (S.D.N.Y. 2024).

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