Category Archives: Supreme Court

Supreme Court – The latest news about Supreme Court from the Lawstarz Blog – Latest news and coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Celebrity Legal News Week Round Up

PROOF in Brief

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Week Ending 10.27.2017

  • Weinstein accusers continue to speak out. Natassia Malthe alleges that in February 2010, Weinstein raped her without a condom at her hotel in London and then masturbated after the attack.  Read More
  • Zelda Perkins a woman who settled a sexual harassment claim against Harvey Weinstein 20 years ago has decided to break her NDA (non disclosure agreement) and speak about the matter. Ms. Perkins seeks to expose a process that silences victims.
  • The first victim lawsuit since the New York Times and the New Yorker blew the lid off Harvey Weinstein’s behavior has been filed. Actress Dominique Huett named the Weinstein Company as defendant in the suit. Huett alleges the Company had knowledge of Harvey’s behavior. Read More
  • Harvey Weinstein suing the company that bears his name. The suit seeks access to various records, documents and email accounts. Weinstein believes he needs this information to fight the lawsuit that is currently filed against him as well as those that will likely be coming.
  • Five women have accused Mark Halperin (The Circus and other news/political shows) of sexual harassment while he had a powerful and prominent role at ABC News. The stories of the women, who currently have chosen to remain anonymous, are all eerily similar.
  • Fox extended Bill O’Reilly’s contract for $25 million despite having knowledge of his $32 million settlement in a sexual harassment matter. Read More
  • To date, more than 200 women have claimed to be victims of harassment and assault by filmmaker James Toback (that’s more than Weinstein!).  Toback’s modus operandi always the same: approach a woman on the street of NY, offer a part in an upcoming film, and then bring on the unwanted sexual comments and behavior, with the interaction often ending in him masturbtaing or dry humping them. Nice.
  • Dozens of sex tapes exist in which Mel B appears may come into evidence at the upcoming trial. Mel B claims that she was drugged in many of the videos and that the sex was nonconsensual.   Read More
Blog, Business Law, Celebrity, International, Legal News, Supreme Court

Ennio Morricone Loses Bid to Reclaim Rights to Film Scores

Ennio Morricone, the famed 88-year-old Italian composer, has lost a lawsuit aimed at grabbing back rights to film scores for Cosi Come Sei (Stay As You Are), Il Giocattolo (A Dangerous Toy) and Un Sacco Bello (Fun Is Beautiful). On Friday, in a case that had a New York judge reviewing Italian copyright law, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest granted summary judgment in favor of Bixio Music Group, the publisher assigned rights decades ago.

Morricone scored the films in the late 1970s and early 1980s pursuant to agreements with Bixio, which had its own contracts with film producers. The composer transferred to Bixio all rights in the works in exchange for three million Italian lira, the right to credits, and the right to a portion of the proceeds from use of the scores.

In 2012, Morricone sent termination notices over six film scores pursuant to the 1976 Copyright Act. In November 2016, he filed a lawsuit seeking a declaration that he indeed was successful in his termination.

The law, however, doesn’t allow “works for hire” to be terminated. Both Morricone and Bixio agreed that the film scores were commissioned works, but disagreed on the import.

Under American law, what matters is whether there’s a written instrument attesting to a “work made for hire,” meaning that the publisher is deemed the author. Some courts further analyze the situation by looking at whether an employer induced the creation of the work and had the right to direct and supervise the manner in which the work was carried out.

Read Full – http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/ennio-morricone-loses-legal-bid-reclaim-rights-film-scores-1046947

Blog, Business Law, Celebrity, International, Legal News, Supreme Court

Hollywood Confronts a Copyright Argument With Potential for Mass Disruption

 9:50am PT by Eriq Gardner

Who really owns the CG characters in blockbuster films like ‘Avengers’ and ‘Night at the Museum’? On Monday, a judge was told it’s not the studios.

Are some of Hollywood’s biggest movies from the past decade — Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Deadpool and Night at the Museum, among others — all copyright infringements because they were allegedly created with stolen technology? The question seems outlandish, and yet, that’s exactly what a California federal judge was told on Monday in a case that can’t be shrugged off as a crank even if it is now treading on some fantastic territory including a scholar’s search for hidden codes in the Hebrew Bible.

Rearden LLC is the plaintiff. The firm was founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman, who claims to own software called MOVA, which captures facial expressions to create photorealistic computer graphic effects. Rearden also alleges its technology was stolen by a former colleague before eventually landing in the hands of a Chinese firm. After the FBI investigated economic espionage, Rearden sued this Chinese company and won an injunction. Now, Rearden is suing the customers of the stolen technology — Disney, Fox and Paramount — who find their blockbusters the subject of bold intellectual property claims.

In response to the lawsuit, the studios have contended that that the copyright, trademark and patent claims fail as a matter of law. This story will focus on the mind-blowing copyright arguments.

At this stage of the dispute, the studios can’t dispute the truth of the allegations — not only did they use stolen technology, they did so knowingly. But Disney, Fox and Paramount ask, so what? Whatever shows up onscreen is primarily the product of human input, namely film direction and an actor’s performance. The technology company simply can’t own the output.

“Indeed, if Rearden’s authorship-ownership theory were law, then Adobe or Microsoft would be deemed to be the author-owner of whatever expressive works the users of Photoshop or Word generate by using those programs,” wrote Kelly Klaus, attorney for the defendants, who also nodded to an 1884 Supreme Court opinion, Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony.

Full Read – http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/hollywood-confronts-a-copyright-argument-potential-mass-disruption-1049516

Blog, Business Law, Civil Rights, Family, Legal News, Supreme Court

Trump administration tells court law does not ban bias against gay workers

Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) – A Trump administration lawyer on Tuesday urged a U.S. appeals court in Manhattan to rule that federal law does not ban discrimination against gay employees.

The U.S. Department of Justice is supporting a New York skydiving company, Altitude Express Inc, in a lawsuit brought by former instructor Donald Zarda, who accused the company of firing him after he told a customer he was gay and she complained. Zarda died in a BASE-jumping accident after filing the lawsuit, and his estate took over the case.

Judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals focused their questions on whether discrimination against gay workers is a form of unlawful sex bias under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law bans discrimination based on workers’ sex, race, religion and other traits.

Justice Department lawyer Hashim Mooppan told the court that Congress never intended for that law to protect gay workers against bias. And in recent years, he said, lawmakers have repeatedly declined to pass bills that would prohibit employment discrimination against gay workers.

During the Obama administration, the Justice Department had not weighed in on the case. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which appeared at Tuesday’s hearing on behalf of Zarda’s estate, has been arguing for five years that bias against gay workers violates the law. The EEOC is an independent federal agency that enforces Title VII.

 read full – https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-court/trump-administration-tells-court-law-does-not-ban-bias-against-gay-workers-idUSKCN1C10EW
Blog, Business Law, Drug Companies, Legal News, Supreme Court

Drug companies want to dismiss Ohio’s lawsuit over opioid epidemic

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio – Companies that make prescription opioids want a Ross County Common Pleas judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine that charged them with stoking Ohio’s opioid epidemic by fraudulently marketing their products.

Legal briefs filed by Purdue Pharma, which makes Oxycontin, say U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements for its products preempt Ohio law, and DeWine’s lawsuit also failed to prove the company’s actions caused the harm he cites.

“The State does not identify a single physician who prescribed one of Purdue’s opioid medications to any patient when it was allegedly medically unnecessary, much less, a physician who did so because of Purdue’s allegedly misleading marketing or promotional materials,” the company’s legal filings say.

Read Full – http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/09/drug_companies_want_to_dismiss.html