The Ninth Circuit ruled that a California federal judge applied local meet-and-confer rules too rigidly when denying a new trial motion in a willful copyright infringement case over the unauthorized DVD distribution of a Christian film.
The Supreme Court left standing a Ninth Circuit ruling that Walmart was not directly liable for copyright infringement in product photographs uploaded by a third-party drop-ship vendor, declining to resolve a circuit split over the volitional conduct test for online platform copyright liability.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment against celebrity fitness trainer Tracy Anderson, holding that the exercise sequences in her 19 fitness DVDs are functional routines — not expressive choreographic works — and therefore unprotectable under copyright law.
The Ninth Circuit held that the copyright first sale doctrine does not apply to foreign-made goods, allowing Omega to prevent Costco from reselling Omega watches in the United States without authorization — a ruling the Supreme Court affirmed by an equally divided 4-4 court in 2010, leaving the Nint
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s injunction requiring Napster to block access to infringing content — holding that Napster’s peer-to-peer music file sharing service was liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and that the Sony Betamax staple article de
The Ninth Circuit held that a flea market operator could be vicariously and contributorily liable for copyright infringement by vendors selling counterfeit recordings — establishing the framework for secondary copyright liability that would later be applied to online platforms and peer-to-peer servi