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1: Google Warns of Monopoly Powers in Oracle Fight at Supreme Court
First off today, Gerrit De Vynck at Bloomberg reports that Google has filed an opening brief with the Supreme Court and is repeating many of its old arguments about why a loss for it in its battle with Oracle would be bad for innovation in the tech industry.
The lawsuit deals with Google’s implementation of Java in its Android mobile operating system. According to Google, they rewrote the language from the ground up but used the original Java APIs to ensure that apps written in Java could work on Android. This prompted Oracle, which owns Java, to file a lawsuit.
The case has bounced around the lower courts with Google winning two trial court victories only to have both overturned on appeal. The case is now before the Supreme Court with the questions being whether APIs can be protected by copyright and, if they are, if their use in this manner is a fair use.
2: Antique Mapmaker Sues Netflix and Amazon Over Bruce Willis Film
Next up today, Sarah Morgan at World IP Review reports that mapmaker Victor Baker has filed a lawsuit against Penguin Random House, Netflix and Amazon over the 2012 film Lay the Favorite over a map shown in several scenes of the movie.
Part of the film takes place on the island of Curacao, which is about 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela. Several scenes feature a map of the island on the wall and it ends up playing a significant role in the movie itself. However, Baker alleges that he created the map, as well as other maps of the Caribbean islands, and the use of his work in the film was not licensed.
Baker is claiming that the infringement is willful and is seeking up to $150,000 in damages as well as a permanent injunction against distributing the film with the scenes where the map is in it.
3: US Court Rules Fair Use Didn’t Apply to Unofficial Prince Videos on YouTube
Finally today, Chris Cooke at Complete Music Update reports that a US court has sided with the Prince estate in a lawsuit over performances by the artists that were posted to YouTube by a fan.
The videos were uploaded by Kian Andrew Habib, who put six videos of Prince performances on his channel. They originally filed a takedown notice to get the videos removed but, when Habib filed a counternotice, the estate sued to keep the videos off of YouTube.
Habib, however, had argued that the videos were fair use. However, the court has now ruled against that saying that Habib’s understanding of fair use, in this case, was incorrect. The judge issued a summary judgment in favor of the Prince estate, however, Habib has implied that he intends to appeal the ruling.
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