8th Cir: Famous Dave's Magic Words: Copyright Assignments and Settlement Agreements

In Thomsen v. Famous Dave's of America, 2010 WL 2219051 (8th Cir. May 12, 2010), the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found the following provision in a settlement agreement to be a valid copyright assignment:

"Al is releasing all copyright, proprietary design and sign work to [Famous Dave's] in all other restaurants that he has worked on with the exception of [signature restaurants]."

Quoting the Ninth Circuit, the Court noted:  "A transfer of ownership requires no "magic words" to satisfy copyright law: even a one-line pro forma statement will do."

The Court found the assignment to be a "clear conveyance".

Practice Tip:  An assignee is considered a "beneficial owner" of a copyright under the Copyright Act 17 U.S.C. 501(b) and is entitled to sue for infringement.   I cover Copyright Ownership and Licensing Litigation in more detail in Chapter 8 of Copyright Litigation Handbook.

Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook from West here  

Associated Press v. Moreover: Hot News, Linking and Getting Legal Documents From Pacer

Associated Press v. Moreover, a recently-settled copyright infringement and "hot news" misappropriation case in the Southern District of New York, brought up the issue of what search engines can take when displaying the content of others. Moreover is a news aggregator that searches 3.5 million blogs and news sources for content and delivers links to its clients. When Moreover links to AP's content (without asking), Moreover includes 255 characters from the underlying content with the link.

Moreover filed a motion to dismiss on November 7, 2007. A review of the docket sheet shows that AP never responded to the motion and apparently after many extensions of time, agreed on some undisclosed basis to dismiss the action. In the memorandum of law in support of the motion to dismiss, the hot case cited was Perfect 10 v. Amazon, 487 F.3d 701 (9th Cir. 2007), a case I have discussed previously that extolled the virtues of a video engine search.

In this age of Electronic Case Filing, anyone can search a federal court's docket sheet for a civil action through http://www.pacer.gov/ and pull down electronically-filed documents. The documents are in PDF format, and by hitting "Save As" you can copy a document to your computer's directory. There is a modest charge associated with getting an actual document (I think that the Moreover memorandum cost me $2.97). But if you want the blow-by-blow on a case, checking a docket sheet doesn't cost anything and can quickly let you know if you've missed anything.

According to AP's 8/18/2008 press release: "AP is pleased to have resolved the litigation in an amicable manner and appreciates VeriSign and Moreover's efforts to resolve AP's concerns," said AP Vice President and General Counsel Srinandan Kasi.

I looked at the filings dismissing the Moreover case and there was nothing to show how or why it settled.