The Court held that intent is required and that mere awareness of infringement does not establish secondary liability.
March 31, 2026Benjamin West Janke and Ashley E. White and Jeremy D. Ray and Scott Johnson
This article discusses two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that suggest courts may be seeking to rein in the use of these financial tools of criminal and civil enforcement.
March 31, 2026Elkan Abramowitz and Jonathan SackOn Dec. 1, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Cox Communications Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment. The case turned on whether Internet Service Providers could be “contributorily liable for copyright infringement, when the provider knew that specific subscribers were using its service to flagrantly infringe and continued to supply those repeat infringers with service.”
March 31, 2026Stan SoocherThe U.S. Supreme Court will consider if Internet users can sue websites for sharing their data with Facebook under the 1988 law aimed at protecting customers' private video rental history.
February 01, 2026Jimmy HooverThe limits on wire fraud prosecutions are continuing to evolve, with courts pushing back on further narrowing the scope of the wire fraud statute post-Ciminelli and Percoco.
December 29, 2025Sidhardha Kamaraju and Katherine Reilly and Aaron WiltseA computer scientist is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to extend copyright protection to works created entirely by artificial intelligence in one of the first cases to reach the justices about the revolutionary technology.
November 01, 2025Jimmy HooverOn May 22, 2025, the Supreme Court endorsed the “fraudulent inducement” theory of wire fraud in Kousisis v. United States, departing from its recent trend of narrowing the scope of broadly worded criminal statutes, including the wire fraud statute. This decision appears to allow the government to obtain a conviction even where the defendant did not intend to cause economic harm to their counterparty, so long as the defendant made material false statements in order to obtain property from another.
June 30, 2025Harry Sandick and Caitlyn WiglerThis article describes the prosecution in Thompson, then turns to the Supreme Court’s rejection of the government’s contention that 18 U.S.C. §1014 criminalizes misleading as well as false statements.
May 31, 2025Elkan Abramowitz and Jonathan SackA follow up to the article on a briefing in 'Kousisis v. United States' before the U.S. Supreme Court that considers the viability of the fraudulent inducement theory. Arguments before the Court took place on Dec. 9, and the authors provide an update.
December 17, 2024Harry Sandick and Caitlyn WiglerIn February 2024, the Fourth Circuit addressed a jury’s 2020 damages award of $1 billion finding Cox secondarily liable for its subscribers’ copyright infringement through illegal copying of copyrighted songs. Both Cox and Sony filed petitions for certiorari.
December 01, 2024Catherine Nyarady and Crystal Parker
