3 Count: Luxembourg Battle

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1: Court Rules in Favor of Photographer Who Accused Painter of ‘Ripping Off’ Her Work

First off today, Matt Growcoot at PetaPixel reports that a United States-based photographer has won an appeal in Luxembourg against the painter Jeff Dieschburg over the alleged copying of one of her photos.

Zhang filed the lawsuit against Dieschburg, alleging that a painting named Turnadot was a copyright infringement of a 2017 photograph she took. However, a lower court found that the painting was a non-infringing use of Zhang’s photo despite side-by-side comparisons of the images showing how similar they were.

Zhang appealed that decision, and according to a post on X (formerly Twitter), the appeals court sided with her. The court has ordered Dieschburg not to exhibit the painting, with a maximum fine of $108,000 if he continues to do so. Zhang highlighted how the court ruled that neither the new medium nor the work being “available online” factored into the court’s decision.

2: Elon Musk’s X Can’t Invent Its Own Copyright Law, Judge Says

Next up today, Ashley Belanger at Ars Technical reports that a US District Judge has dismissed X Corp’s lawsuit against Bright Data, claiming that X Corp’s claims were preempted by copyright law.

X Corp, which runs the site X (formerly Twitter), alleged that Bright Data violated its terms of service and various laws against unauthorized computer access by scraping public data from X. X alleged that Bright Data should be required to pay for such scraping, prompting the lawsuit.

However, the judge dismissed the case, ruling that X’s claims were preempted by copyright law. Worse still, since X only has a non-exclusive license to user data, they couldn’t stand as a copyright plaintiff either. The case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning X can refile it. However, they would have to show actual damages, such as server issues caused by the scraping.

3: Court Junks Copyright Suit for Cryogenic Tank Design

Finally, today, Tushar Tere at The Times of India reports that a court in India has dismissed a long-running lawsuit between three local companies over the design of a cryogenic storage tank and distribution system.

The lawsuit was filed by Inox India Pvt Ltd, who claimed that Cryogas Equipment Pvt Ltd (CEPL) and LNG Express India Pvt Ltd infringed the design of a cryogenic storage tank they had developed. Specifically, they claimed ownership over the engineering drawings.

However, the court ruled that copyright was intended to provide protection for creative expression, not purely engineering work. This was made worse by the fact that, according to the court, many of the similarities between the designs were approaches any engineer would take.

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