Moberg v. 33T LLC

Last updated

Moberg v. 33T LLC was a 2009 case, where the verdict was that a photo posted on a foreign internet site is not a US work. [1] [2] [3]

The Swedish photographer Håkan Moberg sued the Delaware company 33T, LLC over copyright infringement over unauthorised use of photos he published on a German website in 2004. The defendant used Moberg's photos as stock photos in some of their website designs. When the cease-and-desist was ignored Håkan Moberg sued 33T over copyright infringement and violation of the DMCA. [4] The defendant claimed that by making the images available online they would be published in the United States and that would make it a United States work, and that they needed to be registered with the United States Copyright Office. [1] The court rejected that and said that it would "overextend and pervert" U.S. copyright law and be contrary to the goals of the Berne Convention. [1] The court also stated that if anything published online was a US work it would make US citizens able to infringe foreign works without fear of retribution and that it would be contrary to US copyright law: "the United States copyright laws, in accord with the Berne Convention, provide for protection of foreign works in the United States without requiring the artists to undertake any formalities in the United States". [5]

Related Research Articles

Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.

Fair use is a doctrine in the law of the United States that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement. Like "fair dealing" rights that exist in most countries with a British legal history, the fair use right is a general exception that applies to all different kinds of uses with all types of works and turns on a flexible proportionality test that examines the purpose of the use, the amount used, and the impact on the market of the original work. The innovation of the fair use right in US law is that it applies to a list of purposes that is preceded by the opening clause "such as." This has allowed courts to apply it to technologies never envisioned in the original statute including Internet search, the VCR, and the reverse engineering of software.

<i>Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc.</i>

Itar-Tass Russian News Agency v. Russian Kurier, Inc., 153 F.3d 82, was a copyright case about the Russian language weekly Russian Kurier in New York City that had copied and published various materials from Russian newspapers and news agency reports of Itar-TASS. The case was ultimately decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The decision was widely commented upon and the case is considered a landmark case because the court defined rules applicable in the U.S. on the extent to which the copyright laws of the country of origin or those of the U.S. apply in international disputes over copyright. The court held that to determine whether a claimant actually held the copyright on a work, the laws of the country of origin usually applied, but that to decide whether a copyright infringement had occurred and for possible remedies, the laws of the country where the infringement was claimed applied.

The first-sale doctrine is a legal concept that plays an important role in United States patent, copyright and trademark law by limiting the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property. The doctrine enables the distribution chain of copyrighted products, library lending, giving, video rentals and secondary markets for copyrighted works. In trademark law, this same doctrine enables reselling of trademarked products after the trademark holder puts the products on the market. In the case of patented products, the doctrine allows resale of patented products without any control from the patent holder. The first sale doctrine does not apply to patented processes. The doctrine is also referred to as the "right of first sale", "first sale rule", or "first sale exhaustion rule".

Copyright misuse is an equitable defence to copyright infringement in the United States based upon the doctrine of unclean hands. The misuse doctrine provides that the copyright holder engaged in abusive or improper conduct in exploiting or enforcing the copyright will be precluded from enforcing his rights against the infringer. Copyright misuse is often comparable to and draws from the older and more established doctrine of patent misuse, which bars a patentee from obtaining relief for infringement when he extends his patent rights beyond the limited monopoly conferred by the law.

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have been acknowledged and protected in China since the 1980s. China has acceded to the major international conventions on protection of rights to intellectual property. Domestically, protection of intellectual property law has also been established by government legislation, administrative regulations, and decrees in the areas of trademark, copyright, and patent. This has led to the creation of a comprehensive legal framework to protect both local and foreign intellectual property. Despite this, copyright violations are common in the PRC, The American Chamber of Commerce in China surveyed over 500 of its members doing business in China regarding IPR for its 2016 China Business Climate Survey Report, and found that IPR enforcement is improving, but significant challenges still remain. The results show that the laws in place exceed their actual enforcement, with patent protection receiving the highest approval rate, while protection of trade secrets lags far behind. Many US companies have claimed that the Chinese government has stolen their intellectual property sometime in 2009–2019.

Uruguay Round Agreements Act

The Uruguay Round Agreements Act is an Act of Congress in the United States that implemented in U.S. law the Marrakesh Agreement of 1994. The Marrakesh Agreement was part of the Uruguay Round of negotiations which transformed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organization (WTO). One of its effects is to give United States copyright protection to some works that had previously been in the public domain in the United States.

Copyright registration

The purpose of copyright registration is to place on record a verifiable account of the date and content of the work in question, so that in the event of a legal claim, or case of infringement or plagiarism, the copyright owner can produce a copy of the work from an official government source.

The Copyright Act 1957 governs the subject of copyright law in India. The Act is applicable from 21 January 1958. The history of copyright law in India can be traced back to its colonial era under the British Empire. The Copyright Act 1957 was the first post-independence copyright legislation in India and the law has been amended six times since 1957. The most recent amendment was in the year 2012, through the Copyright (Amendment) Act 2012. India is a member of most of the important international conventions governing the area of copyright law, including the Berne Convention of 1886, the Universal Copyright Convention of 1951, the Rome Convention of 1961 and the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Initially, India was not a member of the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) but subsequently entered the treaty in 2013

In copyright law, related rights are the rights of a creative work not connected with the work's actual author. It is used in opposition to the term "authors' rights". Neighbouring rights is a more literal translation of the original French droits voisins. Both authors' rights and related rights are copyrights in the sense of English or U.S. law.

The rule of the shorter term, also called the comparison of terms, is a provision in international copyright treaties. The provision allows that signatory countries can limit the duration of copyright they grant to foreign works under national treatment to no more than the copyright term granted in the country of origin of the work.

Berne Convention 1886 international copyright treaty adopted by over 170 countries

The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, usually known as the Berne Convention, is an international agreement governing copyright, which was first accepted in Berne, Switzerland, in 1886.

Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191, was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality. Even though accurate reproductions might require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element to determine whether a work is copyrightable under US law is originality.

The WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act, is a part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 U.S. law. It has two major portions, Section 102, which implements the requirements of the WIPO Copyright Treaty, and Section 103, which arguably provides additional protection against the circumvention of copy prevention systems and prohibits the removal of copyright management information.

The copyright law of Australia defines the legally enforceable rights of creators of creative and artistic works under Australian law. The scope of copyright in Australia is defined in the Copyright Act 1968, which applies the national law throughout Australia. Designs may be covered by the Copyright Act as well as by the Design Act. Since 2007, performers have moral rights in recordings of their work.

The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". With the stated purpose to promote art and culture, copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time limit, and generally expire 70 years after the author's death. In the United States, any work published before January 1, 1925, is generally considered public domain.

<i>Getaped.com, Inc. v. Cangemi</i>

In Getaped.com, Inc. v. Cangemi, Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was presented with the novel issue of whether a copyrightable work made available over the internet could be considered published under the Copyright Act of 1976. Through analogy to traditional physical distribution, the court held that this indeed constituted publication.

Google has been involved in multiple lawsuits over issues such as privacy, advertising, intellectual property and various Google services such as Google Books and YouTube. The company's legal department expanded from one to nearly 100 lawyers in the first five years of business, and by 2014 had grown to around 400 lawyers. Google's Chief Legal Officer is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development David Drummond.

The copyright law of the United States has a long and complicated history, dating back to colonial times. It was established as federal law with the Copyright Act of 1790. This act was updated many times, including a major revision in 1976.

Penguin Books Ltd. v. India Book Distributors and Others, was a decision of the Delhi High Court issued in 1984. Penguin Books Ltd. of England brought a suit for perpetual injunction against the respondents, India Book Distributors of New Delhi, to restrain them from infringing Penguin's territorial license in 23 books, the subject matter of the suit.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Moberg v. 33T LLC: Delaware District Court Distinguishes Posting and Publication for Purposes of the Copyright Act
  2. Wallace, R.P.; Lusthaus, A.M.; Kim, J.H. "Moberg and the Inconsistent Treatment of the Internet in Personal and Subject Matter Jurisdiction Analysis". SSRN Electronic Journal. November 2011.
  3. Country of Origin and Internet Publication: Applying the Berne Convention in the Digital Age
  4. Exclusive Rights: Court finds that putting photos on the internet doesn’t make them U.S. works
  5. Moberg v. 33T LLC et al, No. 1:2008cv00625 - Document 24 (D. Del. 2009)

See also