HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

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• Late last week,  Judge Louis Stanton of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that plaintiffs in the high-profile copyright class action case against YouTube could not seek statutory damages for videos that are not registered under US copyright law.   Judge Stanton also dismissed plaintiffs’ punitive damages claim, but did permit claims based on live broadcast footage, which were brought by the English Premier Football League, the lead plaintiff in the case, to proceed.  Continue Reading »

If you are designing or developing a video game that depicts this planet or any other fictional world, then you need a pair of trained legal eyes to review the people, places, products and things that will be featured in the game. Go it alone, and you are traveling down a windy road that intersects with copyright, trademark, privacy law and the First Amendment, where the case law is complex, the rulings are inconsistent, and the outcome may ultimately depend on the jurisdiction. Make one mistake and you will find yourself staring down a lawsuit before your game title moves a thousand copies. Whether the lawsuit is filed by the owner of a popular destination who thinks you stole the “look and feel” of his establishment (see E.S.S. Entertainment 2000, Inc. v. Rock Star Videos, Inc., 2008 WL 4791705 (9th Cir. 2008)) or the lead singer of a retro-funk dance group who claims a character in your game wears the same clothing and resembles her (see Kirby v. Sega of America, Inc., 144 Cal.App.4th 47 (2006)), video game profits have caught the world’s attention, and, as in all things, success leads to lawsuits. Continue Reading »