News/Events/Blogs

On June 22, 2022, a New York federal judge dismissed a claim by popular TikTok creator Kelly Manno against Michael Che (former cast member on Saturday Night Live.) Manno claimed that Che copied a comedy bit posted on her TikTok account for his HBO show “That Damn Michael Che.” Manno sued Che, NBCUniversal, (which produces the show,) and WarnerMedia (which owns HBO Max) alleging copyright infringement.

A recent case filed by famous choreographer Kyle Hanagami is set to test the boundaries of copyright law in video games and on social media.

Mr. Hanagami is a popular choreographer with a large YouTube presence.  He won the 2020 iHeart Music Award for Favorite Music Video Choreography for BlackPink’s “Kill This Love” and holds the title for YouTube’s most viewed choreography video of all time. Crucially, he also holds the copyright to the dance to the Charlie Puth song “How Long.”

We previously wrote about a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California against Instagram regarding the use of Instagram’s embedding tools. The plaintiffs, in that case, are two photojournalists who captured images of the George Floyd protests and the 2016 election and posted them to Instagram. Various media companies embedded the photos using Instagram’s proprietary embedding tools. The photos, therefore, appeared on websites without any license from the original photographers.

The Second Circuit recently reversed an injunction stripping designer and Instagram influencer Hayley Paige Gutman of her Instagram accounts in a dispute with her former business partners.

The IP Law Blog has been tracking the progress of the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Taylor Swift by Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, the writers of “Playas Gon’ Play” by the girl group 3LW (released in 2001).  (See “Taylor Swift Keeps Fighting the ‘Players’ and the ‘Haters’” and “Hall v. Swift: Nothing Original About a Player Hater”.) Hall and Butler allege that Swift’s lyrics in “Shake It Off” (“Cause the players gonna play,

Apple is facing a new class-action lawsuit in the Western District of New York alleging that its use of the “buy” button is “false and misleading.” The suit claims that when Apple offers consumers the right to “buy” content, it doesn’t always mean what it says.

Shauna Correia and Jessica Corpuz represented our client in federal court in a case under the Defend Trade Secrets Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The client is a major supplier of electronic package storage lockers throughout North America.  The defendant was a former employee who had refused to return company-owned computers and copies of our client’s sensitive data after he quit. Worse, he had threatened to leak the company’s confidential information,

Global fashion brand Nine West recently filed a Notice of Opposition with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board contesting the registration of the mark “Nina West” by a company owned by Andrew Levitt, drag name Nina West.

Nine West, popular for its shoe, handbag, and accessory lines, filed for bankruptcy in 2018.  It was acquired by Authentic Brands Group (“ABG”), which also owns the brands Brooks Brothers, Forever 21, and Reebok, among others. 

In December 2019, Scott Hervey wrote about the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Taylor Swift by the writers of the song “Playas Gon’ Play.”  The song was released by the girl group 3LW in 2001 and included the lyrics “Playa, they gonna play / And haters, they gonna hate.”  In 2014, Taylor Swift released “Shake It Off,” which included the lyrics “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play,

We recently wrote about a case in the Southern District of New York against Mashable relating to the embedding of content from social media platforms like Instagram.  In that case, the court held that Instagram’s terms of use (which were accepted by the plaintiff, a photographer, when he created an Instagram account) were insufficiently clear to allow Mashable to escape liability for publishing Instagram content through the process of embedding.  Thereafter, the parties settled out of court.