Attorney Evan Brown

February 11, 2014 Copyright, Unfair Competition

Co-founder liable for sending company’s social media followers to new competing company’s Facebook page

The owners of an LLC successfully published a magazine for several years, but the business declined and the company eventually filed bankruptcy. While the bankruptcy proceedings were still underway, one of the owners started up a new magazine publishing the same subject matter. He essentially took over the old company’s website to promote the new magazine. And he posted to the LLC’s Facebook page on three separate occasions, “reminding” those who liked the page to instead like his new company’s Facebook page.

The bankruptcy trustee began an adversary proceeding against the owner asserting, among other things, breach of fiduciary duty, unfair trade practices, and copyright infringement. The bankruptcy court held a trial on these claims and found the owner liable.

On the breach of fiduciary duty claim, the court equated the “reminding” of Facebook users to visit and like the new company’s Facebook page was equivalent to using the company’s confidential information. Similarly, as for the unfair trade practices claim (under the Louisiana Unfair Trade Practices Act), the court found that social media is “an important marketing tool,” and held that “taking away followers of [the old company] and diverting them to [the Facebook page of the new company]” was an unfair trade practice.

On the copyright infringement claim, the court found that the images and articles on the website belonged to the old company under the work made for hire doctrine and that the owner had not obtained consent nor paid compensation for their use in connection with the new enterprise.

In re Thundervision, L.L.C., 2014 WL 468224 (Bkrtcy.E.D.La. February 5, 2014)

Photo credit: Flickr user 1lenore under this Creative Commons license.

February 10, 2014 First Amendment

Police department did not violate First Amendment by demoting officer who posted Confederate flag on Facebook

Case illustrates the “frequent gamble” one makes when posting on social media.

When you hear about Georgia, the name Duke, dealing with the cops, and the Confederate flag, you think Hazzard County, right? Or better yet, Daisy Duke. This case had a number of those elements, but presented a much more serious free speech question than Bo or Luke could have ever done.

Plaintiff (named Duke), a captain at Georgia’s Clayton State University police department, posted a picture of the Confederate flag to his Facebook account with the caption “It’s time for the second revolution.” He was not on duty when he posted it, nor did he intend it to be visible by everyone (just friends and family). He claimed that he wanted to “express his general dissatisfaction with Washington politicians.” At the time, the police department had no social media policy that would have prevented the post.

The chief of police demoted plaintiff and cut his pay by $15,000, stating that the Facebook post was inappropriate for someone in plaintiff’s position, and that officers should not espouse political views in public.

Plaintiff sued the police chief alleging, among other things, that his demotion over the Facebook post was a retaliation that violated his First Amendment rights. Defendant moved to dismiss. The court granted the motion.

It held that the police department’s legitimate interest in efficient public service outweighed plaintiff’s interest in speaking. The determination on this issue depended heavily on the content of the communication, and the fact that defendant was a police officer.

While the court acknowledged that plaintiff intended to express his disapproval of Washington politicians, it found that “on its face his speech could convey a drastically different message with different implications.” The court noted that order and favorable public perception were critical. “[A] police department is a ‘paramilitary organization, with a need to secure discipline, mutual respect, trust and particular efficiency among the ranks due to its status as a quasi-military entity different from other public employers.'” And police departments have a particular interest in maintaining “a favorable reputation with the public.” In sum, the court found, the speech at issue was capable of impeding the government’s ability to perform its duties efficiently.

The fact that the post was made off-duty and just to friends and family did not dissuade the court from finding the demotion to be proper. A local television station picked up the story that plaintiff had made the post. The court noted that “this illustrates the very gamble individuals take in posting content on the Internet and the frequent lack of control one has over its further dissemination.”

Duke v. Hamil, 2014 WL 414222 (N.D.Ga. February 4, 2014)

February 7, 2014 Copyright, DMCA

Must a service provider remove all content a repeat infringer uploaded to qualify for the DMCA safe harbor?

459px-Enjoy_Don't_Destroy Does an online service provider forfeit the safe harbor protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if, when terminating the account of a repeat infringer, it does not delete all content the repeat infringer uploaded — infringing and noninfringing alike? A recent decision involving the antique internet technology Usenet sheds light on an answer.

Active copyright plaintiff Perfect 10 sued Usenet provider Giganews for direct and secondary liability for hosting allegedly infringing materials on the Giganews servers. Giganews asserted the safe harbor of the DMCA (17 U.S.C. 512) as an affirmative defense. Perfect 10 moved for summary judgment on whether the safe harbor applied – it argued that the safe harbor did not apply, Giganews argued that it did. The court denied Perfect 10’s motion.

Perfect 10 asserted that Giganews had not reasonably implemented a policy to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers as required by 17 U.S.C. 512 (i)(1)(A). One of the arguments Perfect 10 made was that Giganews did not reasonably implement its repeat infringer policy because Giganews terminated the accounts of the infringers but did not also delete all the content the infringers had uploaded.

The court was not persuaded that § 512(i)(1)(A) requires a service provider to disable or delete all content a repeat infringer has ever posted. The plain language of the statute requires “termination … of subscribers and account holders,” not the deletion of content. And because a requirement of taking down all content, not just infringing content, would serve no infringement-preventing purpose, the court held that there was no justification for reading such a requirement into the statute.

Perfect 10, Inc. v. Giganews, Inc., — F.Supp.2d —, 2014 WL 323655 (C.D.Cal. January 29, 2014)

February 6, 2014 Electronic Discovery, Evidence

Another court puts an end to a social media discovery fishing expedition

Plaintiff sued a construction company and certain municipal authorities for negligence and loss of parental consortium after her toddler son was seriously injured in front of a construction site. Defendants sought broad discovery from plaintiff’s Facebook account, to which plaintiff objected in part. But the trial court required plaintiff to answer the discovery. So plaintiff sought review with the appellate court. On appeal, the court overturned the trial court.

It held that defendants’ discovery requests were overbroad and compelled the production of personal information that was not relevant to plaintiff’s claims.

Defendants had sought copies of postings on plaintiff’s Facebook account dealing with:

Any counseling or psychological care obtained by plaintiff before or after the accident
Relationships with [her injured son] or her other children, both prior to, and following, the accident
Relationships with all of plaintiff’s children, “boyfriends, husbands, and/or significant others,” both prior to, and following the accident
Mental health, stress complaints, alcohol use or other substance use, both prior to and after, the accident
Any lawsuits filed after the accident by plaintiff

The court observed that one of the defendants’ arguments to the trial court essentially conceded it was on a fishing expedition. The attorney stated, “These are all things that we would like to look under the hood, so to speak, and figure out whether that’s even a theory worth exploring.” And the magistrate judge in the trial court (though ordering the discovery to be had) acknowledged that “95 percent, or 99 percent of this may not be relevant,” and expressed some misgivings at the possibility that large amounts of material might have to be reviewed in camera.

Finding that the trial court order departed “from the essential requirements of the law” because it was overbroad and required the production of irrelevant personal information, the court quashed the discovery requests.

Root v. Balfour Beatty Const. LLC, — So.3d —, 2014 WL 444005 (Fla.App. 2 Dist. February 5, 2014)

February 5, 2014 Defamation, First Amendment

Injunction against blogger violated the First Amendment

Prohibiting former tenant from blogging about landlord was unconstitutional prior restraint against speech.

Defendants wrote several blog posts critical of their former commercial landlord. The landlord sued for defamation and tortious interference, and sought an injunction against defendants’ blogging. The trial court granted the injunction, determining that defendants had “blogged extensively about [plaintiffs] and many of these blogs [were] arguably defamatory.” Although the court noted that a trial on the defamation claims was yet to be held, it ordered defendants “not to enter defamatory blogs in the future.”

Defendants sought review with the Court of Appeal of Florida. On appeal, the court reversed and remanded.

It held that injunctive relief was not available to prohibit the making of defamatory or libelous statements. “A temporary injunction directed to speech is a classic example of prior restraint on speech triggering First Amendment concerns.” But the court noted a limited exception to the general rule where the defamatory words are made in the furtherance of the commission of another intentional tort.

In this case, plaintiffs alleged another intentional tort – intentional interference with advantageous business relationships. But the court found that plaintiffs failed to present sufficient evidence to show they were entitled to an injunction for that claim. The trial court record failed to support an inference that the defendants’ blog posts had a deleterious effect upon defendants’ prospective business relationships.

Chevaldina v. R.K./FL Management, Inc., — So.3d —, 2014 WL 443977 (Fla.App. 3 Dist. February 5, 2014)

Image credit: By Maik Meid (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

February 4, 2014 Anonymity, Computer Crime, Evidence, Privacy

No privacy interest in photo metadata

using-exif-data A digital photo’s EXIF data can reveal where the photo was taken. This has created some interesting scenarios in the past. Consider Vice.com’s inadvertent revealing of John McAfee’s location in Central America, a cleavage pic of a hacker’s girlfriend leading to the hacker’s arrest, and MythBusters host Adam Savage disclosing where he lived from a photo he posted on TwitPic.

In this case, a photo’s EXIF data led to the arrest of an admitted child pornographer.

Defendant took a pornographic image of a 4-year-old girl with his iPhone and used TOR to upload the image to the web. Federal agents analyzed the photo’s EXIF data to determine the GPS coordinates of where defendant took the photo. Agents went to a home near the coordinates. The residents of that home sent the agents to a home about 100 feet away — within the iPhone’s GPS range of error — that belonged to defendant, a registered sex offender.

When the agents visited defendant’s home, he let them enter and later admitted to taking the photo. He then consented to a search, and the agents found child pornography. Defendant was arrested and indicted in federal court in Texas.

Defendant moved to supress the EXIF data as evidence, arguing that law enforcement’s seizure and use of the data violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The court denied the motion.

It rejected defendant’s attempt to “split” his privacy interests between the photo itself and its metadata. Defendant conceded he had no legitimate Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy in the photo — after all, he put it on the web. But as for the metadata, he argued that he retained a privacy interest because he did not realize that he was releasing the information and he intended to remain anonymous.

The court looked to the application of DNA technology to support its conclusion that once defendant left the image in a public place, he had no privacy interest in the metadata:

Assume a defendant left an article of his clothing at a crime scene in 1981. At the time, the defendant had no idea that years later crime labs would be able to conduct DNA analysis of hairs present on that clothing. And in leaving the clothing, he certainly intended to do so “anonymously.” On those grounds, would the defendant be able to suppress the results of the DNA analysis? Of course not, because he left the clothing in a public place and lost any expectation of privacy he had in it, regardless of how he contemplated that clothing could be used.

The court distinguished the holding of this case from the current NSA metadata-collection controversy:

Whatever the ultimate outcome of that issue in higher courts, whether an individual lacks a privacy interest in dialed numbers because those numbers are necessarily disclosed to his phone company is a much different question than whether an individual loses his privacy interest in an item because he voluntarily makes it publicly available on the internet.

It also distinguished this situation from those cases dealing with a defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights in his cell phone and its contents. In those cases, observed the court, the defendant clearly has a privacy interest in his cell phone and its contents. The issue there is whether the justifications that overcome that privacy interest and allow for warrantless seizure of the phone also support warrantless search of its contents. The defendant in this case, by contrast, had no cognizable privacy interest that the government needed to overcome to justify searching for metadata in the photo he placed on the web.

U.S. v. Post, 2014 WL 345992 (S.D.Tex. January 30, 2014)

February 3, 2014 Copyright, Trademarks, Unfair Competition

No copyright protection for two word phrase

In a final pretrial order, plaintiff stated that “to this day [defendant] persists in using [plaintiff’s] copyrighted ‘usurpassed performance’ language on its packages.” Defendant filed a motion in limine (a motion to exclude evidence) to preclude plaintiff from introducing evidence or putting on testimony that would infer or suggest the phrase “unsurpassed performance” has been registered as a copyright.

The court granted the motion.

Under the Copyright Act, “[w]ords and short phrases such as names, titles, and slogans” are not subject to copyright. 37 C.F.R. § 202.1(a). The court looked to a number of cases in which short phrases had been denied copyright protection. For example, other courts had held that “Where Words Come Alive,” “Earth Protector,” “Chipper,” and “Retail Plus” were not copyrightable material.

One wonders whether plaintiff was really trying to assert some form of unfair competition or trademark infringement. The notion is worth entertaining for but a brief moment, till one realizes that laudatory phrases such as “unsurpassed performance” find no protection under trademark law either.

Predator International, Inc. v. Gamo Outdoor USA, Inc., 2014 WL 321069 (D.Colo. January 29, 2014)

No copyright liability against founder of competing company for overseeing development of infringing website

After defendant left plaintiff’s employment to co-found a competing company, plaintiff sued defendant personally for copyright infringement based on the new company’s website’s resemblance to plaintiff’s website. The infringement theory was interesting – plaintiff alleged that defendant did not commit the infringement himself, but that he was secondarily liable for playing a significant role in the direct infringement by the new company’s employees.

Defendant moved to dismiss the copyright infringement claim. The court granted the motion.

There are two types of secondary copyright infringement liability: contributory liability and vicarious liability. A defendant is a contributory infringer if it (1) has knowledge of a third party’s infringing activity, and (2) induces, causes, or materially contributes to the infringing conduct. See Perfect 10, Inc. v. Visa Int’l Service Ass’n, 494 F.3d 788, 795 (9th Cir.2007) (quoting Ellison v. Robertson, 357 F.3d 1072, 1076 (9th Cir.2004)). In the context of copyright law, vicarious liability extends beyond an employer/employee relationship to cases in which a defendant has the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and also has a direct financial interest in such activities. A & M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004, 1022 (9th Cir.2011) (quoting Fonovisa, Inc. v. Cherry Auction, Inc., 76 F.3d 259, 262 (9th Cir.1996)).

In this case, the court held that plaintiff had not alleged enough detail to state a claim of secondary liability against defendant. Instead, the complaint simply recited the elements of contributory and vicarious liability. Specifically, plaintiffs failed to allege:

That defendant was uniquely in possession of the original material on plaintiff’s website, but rather plaintiffs alleged that the material was publically available on the website for anyone to read and copy.
How defendant, as a non-employee (but founder) of the new company, was personally responsible for the content of the new company’s website. (Interestingly, the court held it was not sufficient to allege that defendant was a founder of the new company. Although plaintiffs alleged some factual details about what was actually copied from plaintiff’s website, they alleged no factual details as to defendant’s personal involvement in the infringement.)
Facts that suggested that defendant induced the new company to infringe plaintiff’s website.
Facts that suggested that defendant had the right to control and supervise the new company’s employees who were involved in the alleged infringement.

Plaintiff’s attempts to impose secondary liability were (if they had worked) a clever method for accomplishing the same objective as piercing the corporate veil. Granular control by the individual founder could be equated with the “alter ego” aspect of the veil-piercing analysis. The absence of such specific control by the individual defendant, however, left the possibility of liability only with the company.

BioD, LLC v. Amnio Technology, LLC, 2014 WL 268644 (D.Ariz. January 24, 2014)

Does publication on the web give rise to “access” in copyright infringement analysis?

Plaintiff sued defendant for copyright infringement. Defendant moved for judgment on the pleadings (which is essentially the same thing as a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim except it is after defendant files an answer). Defendant asserted that plaintiff had not pled copyright infringement because under the Seventh Circuit’s “substantial similarity” test to demonstrate infringement, plaintiff had not pled defendant had “access” to the allegedly infringed work.

The court rejected defendant’s argument and denied the motion for judgment on the pleadings on this issue.

In some copyright infringement cases, a plaintiff may not have direct evidence that the defendant committed infringement. In those situations, a finder of fact may infer that infringement has occurred when it is shown that:

the defendant had access to the copyrighted work; and
the accused work is substantially similar to the copyrighted work.

In this case, defendant argued it never had access to plaintiff’s designs that it was alleged to have infringed. But the court considered the online publication, 11 years ago, of plaintiff’s designs, to find access for purposes of the motion for judgment on the pleadings:

With regard to online publication, in 2003, [plaintiff] first published the [allegedly infringed work] at [its website]. The Internet already was widely used and accessible at that time. Because the non-movant is entitled to reasonable favorable inferences in evaluating a motion for judgment on the pleadings, the online publication is enough to establish access for purposes of denying [defendant’s] motion for judgment on the pleadings.

The court’s decision provides no meaningful analysis as to why publication on the web gives rise to access. It states the finding above in such a conclusory manner as if to indicate it sets forth some per se rule. But one is left to wonder whether other factual nuance would change the answer to the inquiry: What if publication were in 1993 rather than 2003, at a time when many, many fewer people were on the web? What if the publication were behind a paywall for which defendant had no authorization to pass? What if defendant pled it did not utilize the web for this sort of information, or, even more compellingly, not at all?

Skyline Design, Inc. v. McGrory Glass, Inc., 2014 WL 258564 (N.D.Ill. January 23, 2014)

January 29, 2014 Computer Crime, Employment

Using new employer’s credentials to copy former employer’s technology did not violate Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

This case arose from some rather complex but interesting facts:

8e19fbd8a556c7b63610c1cfd7782f10 Defendant resigned from his job with an IT consulting firm. One of the firm’s customers hired defendant as an employee. Before the customer/new employer terminated the agreement with the IT consulting firm/former employer, defendant used the customer/new employer’s credentials to access and copy some scripts from the system. (Having the new employee and the scripts eliminated the need to have the consulting firm retained.) The firm/former employer sued under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Defendants (the customer and its new employee) moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The court granted the motion.

It held that the complaint failed to allege “unauthorized access” within the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of the CFAA.

The court looked to the Ninth Circuit’s holding in LVRC Holdings LLC v. Brekka, 581 F.3d 1127 (9th Cir. 2009), which provides that to access a protected computer “without authorization” is to do so “without any permission at all,” and that to “exceed authorized access” is to “access information on the computer that the person is not entitled to access.” And it looked to the more recent case of U.S. v. Nosal, 676 F.3d 854, 863 (9th Cir. 2012), which teaches that an individual does not “exceed authorized access” simply by misusing information that he or she was entitled to view for some other purpose. Under Nosal, the CFAA regulates access to data, not its use by those entitled to access it.

In this case, the court found that the complaint did not allege that defendants were unauthorized to access the scripts in question. In fact, the Statement of Work that the court reviewed specifically granted defendant’s employer and its representatives (including defendant) “sudo access” to “non-shell root commands” that included the scripts at issue.

Plaintiff argued that the access was unauthorized because it had repeatedly refused to grant defendant or his employer the authority to write or edit those scripts. But the court found that argument to address the misuse of the scripts, not unauthorized access. Under Nosal this conduct did not run afoul of the CFAA. So because the complaint failed to allege that defendant and his new employer had no access rights to the scripts, and because the documents upon which plaintiff relied revealed that defendants had certain access rights, the court dismissed the CFAA claim.

Enki Corporation v. Freedman, 2014 WL 261798 (N.D.Cal. January 23, 2014)