Welcome to the Weintraub Resources section. Here, you can find our Blogs, Videos, and Podcasts, in which Weintraub attorneys regularly provide insights and updates on legal developments. You can also find upcoming Weintraub Events, as well as firm and client News.


IP Rights and the “Public Good” Exemption to California’s Anti-SLAPP Law

The Ninth Circuit was recently asked to address the “public interest” exemption to California’s anti-SLAPP law in a class action lawsuit brought by a Plaintiff whose photo and personal information were used without her consent to advertise subscriptions to a website. The case, Martinez v. ZoomInfo Technologies, Inc. (decided Sep. 21, 2023), posed interesting substantive and procedural issues concerning the interplay between one’s intellectual property rights and California’s anti-SLAPP law.

Federal Circuit Continues to Strike Down Patents as Abstract Ideas

The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has again relied on the Supreme Court’s Alice case to invalidate patents on the grounds that they are directed to an abstract idea. Realtime Data LLC v. Fortinet Inc. ( Fed. Cir. 8/2/2023) 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 19857.

Realtime owned several patents covering systems and methods for digital data compression. In 2017 and 2018, Realtime sued a number of entities in the District of Delaware for infringement of five of its patents. The defendants moved to dismiss Realtime’s complaints on the grounds that the claims in the patents were directed to patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. section 101. In 2019, the district court granted the defendant’s motion and held that all of the claims in the five patents were invalid.

Award-Winning AI Art Not Copyrightable

Last year, Jason M. Allen won first place at the Colorado State Fair (the “Competition”) for the two-dimensional artwork entitled Théâtre D’opéra Spatial (the “Work”), which he produced with the aid of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”). Despite receiving this accolade and Allen’s arguments that he contributed significant creative elements to the AI-generated Work, his attempts to copyright the work have been unsuccessful.

PTO Allows Another Bite at the Apple

On July 24, 2023, the United States Patent and Trademark Office changed its procedures for the PTO Director’s review of certain decisions by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.  The decisions in question are those decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to deny or grant petitions to institute proceedings under the America Invents Act.  Those proceedings include inter partes review and post grant review.  This change follows two years of an interim process and public comment period.

Social Media Giants and Copyright: Instagram’s Ninth Circuit Win Sets Precedent Against Photographers

By:  Weintraub Tobin Summer Associate Josh Concepcion

The Ninth Circuit recently revisited the issue of “embedding” content by a website and its implication for copyright infringement claims. On July 17, 2023, the Ninth Circuit issued its opinion in Hunley v. Instagram, LLC, and affirmed the trial court’s ruling that Instagram, a social media platform, could not face liability for secondary infringement under the “Server Test” because plaintiffs could not prove infringement of their copyrighted photographs since the third-party news platforms had “embedded,” but did not store, the copyrighted photos on their own websites. The Court ultimately reasoned that because the plaintiff posted their photos on Instagram and essentially stored a copy of those images on Instagram’s servers, Instagram did not violate or infringe on the plaintiff’s rights since Instagram had a sublicense to display photos posted onto their platform and the third-party news sites had “embedded” the content in their articles.

Court Orders Monetary Sanctions after Plaintiff Fails to Provide any Response to Allegedly Overbroad Discovery Requests

In Buergofol GmbH v. Omega Liner Company, Inc., 4-22-cv-04112 (DSD Jul. 13, 2023) (Karen E. Schreier), the court granted the defendant’s motion to compel and awarded monetary sanctions after the plaintiff failed to respond at all to discovery requests that the plaintiff had objected to as overbroad because the court ruled the plaintiff “still had an obligation to respond to the extent it did not object.”

Is Warhol Bad for Documentarians?

The Supreme Court decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith changed the way fair use is analyzed. In determining fair use, four factors are examined. The first fair use factor examines the purpose and character of the use. Prior to this case, the focus has been on the transformative nature of the work itself. The Supreme Court in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music established this transformative use analysis when it said that the first fair use factor is an inquiry into whether “the new work merely “supersedes the objects” of the original creation, or instead adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning, or message[,]. . . in other words, whether and to what extent the new work is transformative.” This transformative use analysis took on great importance and often eclipsed the other fair use factors. Prior to this case, the focus was on whether the second work had a different aesthetic or conveyed a different meaning. If the work was transformative, it was almost always found to be fair use.