CMI – Attorney Evan Brown

November 10, 2019 Copyright, DMCA

Does a plaintiff claiming unlawful removal of copyright management information have to own a registered copyright?

Plaintiff sued defendants for violation of the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) that prohibit one from intentionally removing or altering any copyright management information (“CMI”) with the knowledge, or having reasonable grounds to know, that it will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal a copyright infringement (17 U.S.C. § 1202(b)).

Defendants moved to dismiss, asserting that the court should reject plaintiff’s DMCA cause of action for failure to state a claim for which relief may be granted because copyright registration, which plaintiff admits it lacks, was a prerequisite for bringing suit under this provision of the DMCA.

The court denied the motion. It held that copyright registration was not a prerequisite to this sort of action.

Defendants had argued that the provisions of 17 U.S.C. § 411(a) required registration. That section provides that “no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.” Defendants argued that this requirement applied to DMCA actions and tried to justify their position by asserting that (1) a plain reading of Section 1202(b) of the DMCA establishes that a claim brought thereunder constitutes a civil action for infringement, (2) the provisions of Title 17 of the United States Code, including 17 U.S.C. § 411(a), apply to the DMCA despite its silence as to those provisions, and (3) precedent shows that the registration requirement applies to the DMCA. The court rejected these arguments.

First, a plain reading of the DMCA did not establish that it is subject to the registration requirement found in 17 U.S.C. § 411(a). Such requirement pertains to “civil action[s] for infringement of the copyright.” However, a DMCA action under Section 1202(b) is not an action for infringement, but rather for the improper removal or alteration of CMI. Second, the court held that Section 411(a) need not apply to the DMCA merely because other provisions of Title 17 do. Finally, the case law defendants cited, including the recent Supreme Court case of Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com, did not indicate that registration is required for DMCA actions.

Diamondback Industries, Inv. v. Repeat Precision, LLC, 2019 WL 5842756 (N.D.Tex., November 7, 2019)

Company cannot avoid DMCA liability for false CMI by claiming it used its own name

Plaintiff sued defendant claiming defendant violated the DMCA by providing and distributing false copyright management information (“CMI”), in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1202(a)(1)–(2). Defendant had placed its brand name and logo on and adjacent to plaintiff’s photo within defendant’s advertising material.

The part the DMCA relevant to this case provides that “[n]o person shall knowingly and with the intent to induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal infringement — (1) provide copyright management information that is false, or (2) distribute or import for distribution copyright management information that is false.”

Section 1202(c) defines CMI as “any of the following information conveyed in connection with copies or phonorecords of a work or performances or displays of a work, including in digital form, except that such term does not include any personally identifying information about a user of a work or of a copy, phonorecord, performance, or display of a work: …” (emphasis added). It goes on to list eight types of CMI, as relevant in this case: (2) the name of, and other identifying information about, the author of the work; (3) the name of, and other identifying information about, the copyright owner of the work, including the information set forth in a notice of copyright; and (7) identifying numbers or symbols referring to such information or links to such information.

Defendant moved to dismiss, arguing that the plain language of § 1202(c) excepts from the definition of CMI “any personally identifying information about a user of a work or of a copy, phonorecord, performance, or display of a work.” It reasoned that because plaintiff’s complaint defined defendant as a “user” of the photograph (i.e., by alleging that defendant used the photograph for commercial promotion) and because personally identifiable information includes names, the name of a user of a work is not, and cannot, be CMI.

The court rejected this argument and denied the motion to dismiss. It looked to the decision of another federal court, Tiermy v. Moschino S.P.A., No. 15-CV-5900, 2016 WL 4942033 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 13, 2016) in which a defendant had made a similar argument. As that court noted, defendant’s argument fell short on a logical basis. Taking defendant’s theory to the extreme, virtually any person who took another’s work and placed their name or brand on it could be considered a “user of a work” rather than an infringer, and escape liability. The court found that was not the intent of the statute, which is to protect the integrity of CMI by prohibiting the provision of false CMI. The court held that it cannot be, and defendant provided no authority in support, that an alleged infringer can escape liability under § 1202(a) simply because the false CMI put forth is the alleged infringer’s own name.

Roth v. The Walsh Co., 2019 WL 318404 (E.D. Wis. Jan. 24, 2019)

November 19, 2018 Copyright, Unfair Competition

Web scraping case fails under Dastar

Plaintiff sued defendant claiming that defendant wrongfully scraped sales listings from plaintiff’s website and copied those listings on defendant’s own website. It brought the following claims:

Violation of the Copyright Act’s prohibitions against distributing false copyright management information (“CMI”) (17 U.S.C. §1202(a)), and removing or altering CMI (Id., §1202(b)); and
Violation of the Lanham Act for reverse passing off and false endorsement.

Defendant moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The court granted the motion.

CMI claim

The court dismissed the claim asserting distribution of false CMI because plaintiff alleged that the false CMI was a blanket copyright notice found on defendant’s website’s terms of use, and not on the pages where the copied content was displayed.

It also dismissed plaintiff’s claim for removal of CMI because it found that the allegations concerning the CMI allegedly removed – a copyright notice found at the bottom of the pages of plaintiff’s website – covered the pages of the website itself, not the particular listings that were allegedly copied without the CMI. It held that:

To violate the DMCA, the false CMI must be “conveyed in connection” with the work. General copyright notices are not “conveyed” with the work, and thus do not violate the DMCA. [See GC2 Inc. v. Int’l Game Tech. PLC, 255 F. Supp. 3d 812, 821 (N.D. Ill. 2017)] (“Courts, however, have generally required more than a boilerplate terms of use notice near a copyrighted work in order to find a party liable for distributing false CMI”); Pers. Keepsakes, Inc. v. Personalizationmall.com, Inc., 2012 WL 414803, at *7 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 8, 2012) (“[A]s a matter of law, if a general copyright notice appears on an entirely different webpage than the work at issue, then that CMI is not ‘conveyed’ with the work and no claim will lie under the DMCA.”)

Lanham Act claim

On the Lanham Act claim, the court found that plaintiff failed to allege that it had a protectible mark that was being used in a manner that was likely to cause confusion among consumers.

The court also applied the 2003 Supreme Court case of Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003) to find that plaintiff’s Lanham Act claim failed. In Dastar, the Supreme Court concluded that “false designation of origin” as it is used in the Lanham Act attaches to the producer of tangible goods that are offered for sale, and not to the author of any idea, concept, or communication embodied in those goods. In this case, the defendant created the final product (website listings), albeit using the plaintiff’s content (just like in Dastar). Because plaintiff was not the source of the product (the duplicated listings), it did not have a claim under the Lanham Act.

Alan Ross Machinery Corp. v. Machinio Corporation, 2018 WL 6018603 (N.D.Ill. November 16, 2018)

June 1, 2017 Copyright

Instagram DMCA case over removal of copyright notice moves forward

Linking to the source will not keep you out of copyright trouble.

Defendant clothing company copied and cropped one of plaintiff photographer’s images, making plaintiff’s watermarked copyright notice no longer visible. Defendant posted the cropped version to Instagram and included a link to plaintiff’s Instagram post that contained the original image.

Plaintiff sued for copyright infringement and for unauthorized removal and/or alteration of copyright management information (“CMI”) under 17 U.S.C. 1202(b) (a portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

Defendant moved to dismiss the action. The court granted the motion as to copyright infringement, but denied the motion as to removal of CMI.

The court dismissed the copyright infringement claim because plaintiff only alleged that she had applied for registration of the copyright in the image but had not yet received the registration certificate. (We covered this issue in a previous post.)

But the court held that registration was not a requirement for the CMI claim under the DMCA. And the court also rejected defendant’s argument that the inclusion of a link to plaintiff’s work undermined any assertion on plaintiff’s part that defendant’s conduct was intentional. (The relevant section of the DMCA concerning CMI includes a requirement that the removal be done “intentionally”).

Gattoni v. Tibi, LLC, 2017 WL 2313882 (S.D.N.Y. May 25, 2017)

Image courtesy of Flickr user Igor Putina under this Creative Commons license. Image cropped.

DMCA’s protection of copyright management information applied to non-electronic works

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides safe harbors from copyright infringement liability for online service providers (17 U.S.C. 512) and makes it unlawful to circumvent technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works (17 U.S.C. 1201). A lesser-known (and lesser-litigated) provision of the DMCA (17 U.S.C. 1202) makes it illegal to intentionally remove or alter any copyright management information or to distribute copies of works knowing that copyright information has been removed or altered without authority of the copyright owner or the law. “Copyright management information” includes information conveyed in connection with copies of the work, such as the title and the name of the author.

A recent case from federal court in Florida considered whether this regulation of copyright management information in the DMCA applies only to electronic works intended for distribution over the internet, or whether it applies to more traditional works such as hard copy technical drawings. The court interpreted the DMCA broadly to apply to all kinds of works, whether on the internet or not.

Plaintiff alleged that defendant violated the DMCA by distributing copies of plaintiff’s drawings “knowing that [plaintiff’s] name had been removed therefrom and/or that another entity’s name had been added thereto.” Defendant argued that plaintiff failed to state a claim for a violation of the DMCA because the DMCA only applies to “technological” infringement. Defendant cited to Textile Secrets Intl’l, Inc. v. Ya–Ya Brand, Inc., 524 F.Supp.2d 1184 (C.D.Cal.2007), which found that § 1202(b) “was [not] intended to apply to circumstances that have no relation to the Internet, electronic commerce, automated copyright protections, or management systems, public registers, or other technological measures or processes as contemplated in the DMCA as a whole.” To read it otherwise, the court in that case reasoned, would contradict the “legislative intent behind the DMCA to facilitate electronic and Internet commerce.”

In this case, however, the court noted that other courts, focusing on the plain language of the DMCA, have held differently, and approved the DMCA’s application to non-technological contexts. See Murphy v. Millennium Radio Group LLC, 650 F.3d 295 (3d Cir.2011); Agence France Presse v. Morel, 769 F.Supp.2d 295 (S.D.N.Y.2011). Although in this case, as in Murphy, the legislative history of the DMCA was consistent with defendant’s interpretation, it did not actually contradict it. Instead, Section 1202(b) simply established a cause of action for the removal of, among other things, the name of the author of a work when it has been conveyed in connection with copies of the work.

So the court, as it found it was required to do, considered the statute’s plain meaning before it considered its legislative history. Under that analysis, it held that plaintiff’s allegations were sufficient to a state a claim for violation of the DMCA.

Roof & Rack Products, Inc. v. GYB Investors, LLC, 2014 WL 3183278 (S.D. Fla. July 8, 2014)

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago advising clients on matters dealing with copyright, technology, the internet and new media.