contributory infringement Archives

Ziff Davis v OpenAI: Key Copyright Litigation Ruling

In a recent decision, In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litig., 2025 WL 3635559 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 15, 2025) District Court Judge Stein ruled, for the first time in AI copyright litigation, that crawling a website in violation of a robots.txs website code does not infringe the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. The New York court also confirmed in a pleadings motion ruling that tenable claims (claims that can survive a pleading motion) can be made out by alleging copyright infringement in AI generated outputs, DMCA claims for intentional removal of copyright management information (CMI), and trademark dilution claims for using famous marks in generated AI output that does not contain content of the trademark owner.…

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Proving copyright infringement: John Kaldor Fabricmaker v Lee Ann Fashions

To prove copyright infringement, the claimant has the onus of proving two things: first the alleged infringer created his or her work by copying from the copyright owner’s work (copying in fact); second, that all or a substantial part of the original work was copied (illicit copying). The analytical steps in each inquiry have been considered in numerous cases. For example, the Supreme Court of Canada reviewed the steps a Canadian court should follow in establishing illicit copying in a “altered copying” case in Cinar Corporation v.…

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UMG v Veoh: US appeal court sides with Veoh in appeal

Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals released a revised opinion in the Veoh Networks case, UMG Recordings v Shelter Capital Partners No. 09—55902 (9^th.Cir. Marc. 14, 2013), superseding the earlier opinion, UMG Recordings v Shelter Capital Partners LLC, 101 U.S.P.Q.2d 1001 (9^th.Cir. 2011). The decision reviewed the scope of the DMCA hosting safe harbor finding it applicable on the facts of the case to the Veoh Networks video sharing site.

In the original decision the Ninth Circuit made three important rulings with respect to the scope of the DMCA hosting safe harbor:

The safe harbor can cover use by service providers of an automated process for transcoding and making files accessible.

…

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Understanding Flava Works v myVidster: does inline linking infringe copyright?

Last week, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals released its opinion in the Flava Works, Inc, v Gunter dba myVidster 2012 WL 3124826 (7^th.Cir. Aug 2, 2012) case. The central issue was whether Flava Works, the owner of copyrights in videos, was entitled to a preliminary injunction against the social video bookmarking service myVidster. The injunction which had been granted by the District Court was vacated.

Some commentators have construed the decision as a ruling that embedding or inline linking to a copyright-infringing video on another web site does not infringe copyright[1].…

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My remarks to the Senate Committee studying Bill C-11

The following are my opening remarks to the Senate Committee studying Bill C-11 earlier today. The link to the webcast can be found here.

I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear today to provide input on Bill C-11.

Before starting my remarks, I would like to give you some background about myself.

I am a senior partner with the law firm McCarthy Tétrault.
I am an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School where I teach IP law.

…

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Developments in Computer, Internet and E-Commerce Law (2011-2012)

Here are the slides used in my presentation to the Toronto Computer Lawyers Group earlier today, The Year in Review: Developments in Computer, Internet and E-Commerce Law (2011-2012). It covers significant developements since my talk last spring, Developments in Computer, Internet and E-Commerce Law (2010-2011).

The slides include a summary of the following cases:

Kraft Real Estate Investments, LLC v Homeway.com, Inc. 2012 WL 220271 (D.S.Car. Jan 24, 2012)

Swift v. Zynga Game Network, Inc., 805 F.Supp.2d…

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Michael Geist: A question of values

With Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act, on its way to clause by clause review Canadians have a chance to think about what values they want copyright to reflect. Canadians are being bombarded with a dizzying array of information about amendments that have been proposed including amendments related to enablement, statutory damages, TPMs and fair dealing. Much of the information is inaccurate and emotionally super-charged to garner as much visceral reaction as possible. A significant portion of it originates from Internet activist Michael Geist and is repeated throughout the blogosphere and in the traditional news media, usually with no attempt at analysis.…

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Reining in the rhetoric on copyright reform

This blog post is a longer version of the article entitled This Bill is no SOPA published in the Financial Post today.

While recent attempts by the usual suspects making hysterical predictions about copyright reform in Canada have been ratcheted up yet again, this time the claims are so outrageous that they can perhaps best be described as having “jumped the shark”. Canadians are being told that Bill C-11, an act to amend Canada’s outdated copyright law, could be used to shut down popular web sites like YouTube, fundamentally change the Internet, sabotage online freedoms, and hog-tie innovators.…

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Developments in Computer, Internet and E-Commerce Law (2010-2011)

Here are the slides used in my presentation to the Toronto Computer Lawyers Group earlier today, The Year in Review: Developments in Computer, Internet and E-Commerce Law (2010-2011). It covers significant developements since my talk last spring.

The slides include a summary of the following cases and statutory materials:

Privacy:

Cite Cards Canada Inc. v. Pleasance, 2011 ONCA 3

Leon’s Furniture Limited v. Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner), 2011 ABCA 94

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company v. Privacy Commissioner of Canada, 2010 FC 736

Nammo v.…

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C-32 enablement remedy targets secondary copyright infringement

Mark Twain once famously commented, “Only one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” Canadian copyright law bears the burden of his axiom more than most. The pith of our copyright law dates from a 1911 bill passed in the United Kingdom, which we adopted wholesale in the early 1920s, and have not kept current with the changes in time.

Our law, which was designed to deal with player pianos and renegade printing presses, and later traditional broadcast techologies like radio and TV, is occasionally called upon to deal with illegal filesharing on the Internet.…

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