Judge Rips Lawyers in IP Rift; Will Award Fees to Defendants
A New York federal judge has ruled that no “reasonable attorney” would have sued news organizations for broadcasting or publishing seconds-long clips from the 45-minute live Facebook video of a childbirth, reports Ars Technica.
And the media outlets defendants are entitled to recover what may amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs, writes David Kravets.
“No reasonable lawyer with any familiarity with the law of copyright could have thought that the fleeting and minimal uses, in the context of news reporting and social commentary, that these defendants made of tiny portions of the 45-minute video was anything but fair,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of New York wrote.
Read the Ars Technica article.