Justia Contracts Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in Copyright
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This case arose out of competition in the market for software used to manage and analyze large and complex datasets. SAS filed suit against WPL, alleging that WPL breached a license agreement for SAS software and violated copyrights on that software. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment finding WPL liable for beach of the license agreement, holding that the contractual terms at issue were unambiguous and that SAS has shown that WPL violated those terms. The court vacated the portion of the district court's ruling on the copyright claim and remanded with instructions to dismiss it as moot. View "SAS Institute, Inc. v. World Programming Ltd." on Justia Law

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In these consolidated appeals, the First Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision to (1) dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims under Massachusetts law for libel and intentional interference with prospective contractual relations, (2) bar portions of Plaintiffs’ Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93A claim from going forward, and (3) award attorney’s fees and costs to Defendant.These consolidated appeals concerned a lawsuit that involved a number of claims arising under federal copyright law, state tort law, and chapter 93A. Defendant operated a website called RipoffReport.com. Plaintiffs were a Massachusetts attorney, a corporate entity that the attorney created, and Christian DuPont. Plaintiffs’ claims pertained to a dispute arising from two reports that DuPont authored and posted on the Ripoff Report and that were highly critical of the attorney. The First Circuit affirmed the district court’s partial grant of Defendant’s motion to dismiss, the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Defendant, and the district court’s fees award order for the reasons stated above. View "Small Justice LLC v. Xcentric Ventures LLC" on Justia Law

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Stan Lee Media claimed to own intellectual-property rights in a number of popular Marvel Enterprises comic-book characters. Its claims derived from a 1998 contractual agreement with Stan Lee, in which he transferred all of his ownership rights in characters he created while working at Marvel to Stan Lee Media in exchange for salary and other benefits. Stan Lee Media brought copyright infringement claims against Marvel Enterprises' corporate owner, The Walt Disney Company. Disney disputed whether Stan Lee Media had any interest whatever in the Marvel characters. The Ninth Circuit addressed the complex question of ownership in "Stan Lee Media, Inc. v. Lee," (2014 WL 5462400 (9th Cir. Oct. 29, 2014)), finding that Stan Lee Media could not even allege any right to ownership of the disputed properties. The Tenth Circuit concluded that the Ninth Circuit’s decision on the ownership issue was entitled to collateral-estoppel effect in subsequent cases involving claims for relief premised on that issue. Thus, because Stan Lee Media was precluded from alleging ownership of the at-issue intellectual properties, Stan Lee Media’s copyright-infringement claim failed here as a matter of law. View "Stan Lee Media v. Walt Disney Company" on Justia Law

Posted in: Contracts, Copyright
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Plaintiff Paul Ellington, an heir and grandson of Duke Ellington, filed this breach of contract action to recover royalties allegedly due under a royalty provision contained in a 1961 United States copyright renewal Agreement between Duke Ellington and Mills Music, Inc., now EMI Music, Inc. The Agreement assigned to a “Second Party” - defined as consisting of a group of music publishers including Mills Music - the right to renew the copyright to certain music compositions written by Duke Ellington, subject to the payment of royalties. The royalty provision of the Agreement required the Second Party to pay Duke Ellington and named members of his family a percentage of the net revenue received from a foreign publication of the musical publication. Plaintiff claimed that by using affiliated foreign subpublishers, EMI breached the Agreement by diluting Plaintiff’s share of the royalties. Supreme Court dismissed the complaint in its entirety, and the Appellate Division affirmed. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the disputed terms of the Agreement were clear and unambiguous and that the Appellate Division correctly held that Plaintiff did not state a cause of action for breach of the Agreement.View "Ellington v. EMI Music, Inc." on Justia Law

Posted in: Contracts, Copyright
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The case involves statements made by plaintiff Vehicle Market Research, Inc. (VMR) in a breach of contract case that were allegedly inconsistent with earlier statements by its sole owner, John Tagliapietra. VMR developed and owned certain intellectual property, including a software system to calculate the value of a total loss of an automobile for the purposes of the automobile insurance industry and certain “pre-existing software tools, utilities, concepts, techniques, text, research or development” used in the development of the software. When Mr. Tagliapietra filed for personal bankruptcy, he asserted that his shares in VMR were worth nothing. A few years later, as the bankruptcy was winding down, VMR sued Mitchell International, Inc., a company which held an exclusive license to VMR's technology. That case sought $4.5 million in damages for the alleged misappropriation of that technology. The question this case presented to the Tenth Circuit was whether the statements by VMR and Mr. Tagliapietra in the litigation against Mitchell were so clearly contrary to the statements made by Mr. Tagliapietra in his bankruptcy proceeding that VMR should have been judicially estopped from proceeding with its suit against Mitchell. After review, the Court concluded that neither VMR’s litigation claim for payments nor Mr. Tagliapietra’s deposition testimony in that lawsuit was clearly inconsistent with his valuation of 0.00 for his VMR stock at the time of his bankruptcy petition in 2005, the date when the initial bankruptcy representations were made. "If there were grounds for judicial estoppel, it would have to be based on a duty by Mr. Tagliapietra to amend his bankruptcy pleadings to report a possible increased value for his VMR stock at least as of the time that VMR filed its suit against Mitchell in 2009. However, our precedent is not clear on whether a debtor has a continuing duty to amend his bankruptcy schedules when the estate’s assets change in value. Given our reluctance to invoke judicial estoppel, and keeping in mind that judicial estoppel is an affirmative defense that its proponent must prove, we conclude that in this case Mitchell has not met its burden of showing any clearly inconsistent statements that would warrant that relief." View "Vehicle Market Research v. Mitchell International" on Justia Law

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In 2001, ASC and Paragon entered into a contract to develop and support computer software for the Chicago Tribune. This software, called the “Single Copy Distribution System” (SCDS) would allow the Tribune to manage and track newspaper deliveries and subscriptions. Tensions emerged and Paragon terminated the contract in 2003. ASC successfully sued Paragon in Ohio state court, obtaining a declaration that ASC was the sole owner of the SCDS. In federal court, ASC alleged copyright infringement, trademark infringement, breach of contract, conversion, tortious interference with a business relationship, unjust enrichment, and unfair competition based on Paragon’s alleged copying of the SCDS software to use in its DRACI software, developed in 2004 for another newspaper. After eight years of litigation, the district court granted summary judgment to Paragon on all claims. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, stating that ASC had never submitted any evidence identifying the unique protectable elements of SCDS, and that there was insufficient evidence to generate even an implication that DRACI is substantially similar to SCDS. View "Automated Solutions Corp. v. Paragon Data Sys., Inc." on Justia Law

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Plaintiffs were Massachusetts-based producers of “reggaeton” music. This case centered on seven songs released on an album distributed by Defendants that allegedly infringed upon copyrights held by Plaintiffs and breached contracts to which Plaintiffs claimed to be parties and/or third-party beneficiaries. The district court granted Defendants’ motion for summary judgment, concluding (1) with respect to the copyright claims, Plaintiffs failed to register their copyrights in the underlying compositions they claimed were infringed, as required under 17 U.S.C. 411(A); and (2) with respect to the breach of contract claims, there was no evidence of a direct agreement between the parties or of third-party beneficiary status. The First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment for Defendants on the copyright and contract claims. View "Alicea v. Ayala" on Justia Law

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Defendants, the children of the late Jack Kirby, one of the most influential comic book artists of all time, appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment to Marvel. This case concerned the property rights in 262 works published by Marvel between 1958-1963. After defendants served various Marvel entities with Termination Notices purporting to exercise statutory termination rights under section 304(c)(2) of the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 304, Marvel filed suit seeking a declaration that defendants have no termination rights under section 304(c)(2). The court concluded that the district court lacked personal jurisdiction over Lisa and Neal Kirby and, therefore, vacated the district court's judgment against them; Lisa and Neal are not indispensable parties and it was appropriate for the action against Barbara and Susan Kirby to have proceeded on its merits; the district court did not err in determining as a matter of law that the works at issue were "made for hire," made at Marvel's instance and expense, and that the parties had no agreement to the contrary; and the district court properly granted Marvel's motion for summary judgment as to Susan and Barbara, who were without termination rights under section 304(c). View "Marvel Characters, Inc. v. Kirby" on Justia Law

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This case stemmed from a dispute between the parties over license agreements which allowed Myriad access to Oracle's Java programming language. On appeal, Myriad challenged the district court's partial denial of its motion to compel arbitration. The court concluded that the incorporation of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) arbitration rules into the parties' commercial contract constituted clear and unmistakable evidence that the parties agreed to arbitrate arbitrability. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Oracle America, Inc. v. Myriad Group A.G." on Justia Law

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Fox filed suit against Dish Network for copyright infringement and breach of contract, seeking a preliminary injunction. At issue were two Dish products: (1) "PrimeTime Anytime," which allowed a cable subscriber to set a single timer to record any and all primetime programming on four major networks; and (2) "AutoHop," which allowed users to automatically skip commercials. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in holding that Fox did not establish a likelihood of success on its direct infringement claim. In this case, Dish's PrimeTime Anytime program created the copied program only in response to the user's command and the district court did not err in concluding that the user, not Dish, made the copy. Operating a system used to make copies at the user's command did not mean that the system operator, rather than the user, caused copies to be made. Although Fox established a prima facie case of direct infringement by Dish customers, Dish met its burden of demonstrating that it was likely to succeed on its affirmative defense that its customers' copying was a "fair use." Accordingly, the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that Fox was unlikely to succeed on its claim of secondary infringement. Applying a very deferential standard of review, the court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying a preliminary injunction based on alleged contract breaches. Finally, even if Fox was likely to succeed on its claims that Dish directly infringed Fox's copyrights and breached the no-copying clause of the contract at issue by making "quality assurance" copies, the court agreed with the district court that Fox did not demonstrate a likelihood of irreparable harm resulting from these copies. Therefore, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Fox Broadcasting Co. v. Dish Network" on Justia Law