3 Count: Can’t Leave

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1: DreamWorks Animation Wins Big ‘Kung Fu Panda’ Lawsuit

First off today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that DreamWorks has won an ongoing lawsuit over its 2008 movie “Kung Fu Panda” after the plaintiff, who accused the studio of ripping off his idea, suddenly dropped the case.

The lawsuit was brought by Jayme Gordon, who claimed DreamWorks, who claims to have developed the concept in the 90s, including many of the elements and characters that appeared in the film. This was backed up by a 2000 copyright registration that featured many similar drawings. Based on that, Gordon’s case survived a motion for summary judgment and seemed to be headed for a trial.

However, DreamWorks unearthed evidence that the work in that original registration was, at least in part, traced from an earlier Disney coloring book. DreamWorks was prepared to file a motion to dismiss on those grounds but, before they could do so, Gordon dropped the lawsuit with prejudice, which prevents it from being refiled.

2: Fox News Sues TVEyes for Copyright Infringement

Next up today, The Wrap is reporting that Fox News is suing TVEyes, a broadcast search engine, alleging that TVEyes is making content from their cable network available on their service without permission.

According to the lawsuit, TVEyes approached Fox News about obtaining a license to use their content and admitted that they were already doing so.

According to its site, TVEyes is a tool to help people search media for mentions relevant to their company or interests. It then lets people watch clips and relevant media that it finds.

Fox News said that it had no choice but to file the lawsuit after attempts to resolve it peacefully failed. The lawsuit seeks unspecified statutory and punitive damages.

3: German Publishers Can’t Wean Themselves Off Google News, Despite Winning Copyright Law Change

Finally today, Natasha Lomas at TechCrunch reports that, despite lobbying efforts by German newspapers and the passing of a new law to make it possible to seek licenses from search engines, major German publishers have not pulled their content from Google News.

Germany newspapers pressured their government to pass a law to enable them to charge license fees for snippets of text used in aggregations, such as Google News. Though the law was scaled back, Google still announced it was making Germany’s version of Google News opt-in. However, now that the law has gone into effect, it seems most German publishers, including some who lobbied for the law, have opted in.

According to an AP report, one of those publishers, Axel Springer, still says it expects to receive money from Google. Other publishers that have opted in include Spiegel Online and Zeit Online.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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