T-Series issues Legal Notices to Video Platforms, Ford Motors denies Freeplay Music’s infringement claims and Court denies Taylor Swift’s motion to dismiss Infringement Lawsuit.

T-Series issues Legal Notices to Video Platforms, Ford Motors denies Freeplay Music’s infringement claims and Court denies Taylor Swift’s motion to dismiss Infringement Lawsuit.

T-Series issues Legal Notices to Video Platforms

The music record label T-Series has recently issued legal notices to several social video platform including Bolo Indya, Mitron, MX Player’s Takatak, Triller for allegedly using and infringing copyrighted work owned by T-Series. Super Cassettes Industries Private Limited, which is T-Series’ parent company, has asked each of these short-video platforms to pay around INR 3.5 crore in damage and render accounts of all revenues illegally earned by the platforms from the copyrighted content,
Additionally, T-Series has served a notice to the Chinese app Snack Video which is operational in India and has also filed a lawsuit against short-video app Roposo.

Ford Motors denies Freeplay Music’s infringement claims

The ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit between Ford and Freeplay Music, has now resulted in Ford countersuing Freeplay, after denying the Freeplay’s infringement claims. Freeplay Music, which is a music library, had previously filed an infringement suit against Ford in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. In the lawsuit, Freeplay Music claimed that Ford had used 54 songs from its music catalog 74 times in advertisements without paying for them and wanted the court to order Ford to pay for the infringements to the tune of USD 8.1 million. In response to the lawsuit Ford denied all of these allegations.
Ford stated that, these allegations were baseless, since the advertisements that Freeplay Music had mentioned in their lawsuit, were video advertisements posted by third-party affiliates on YouTube in foreign jurisdictions directed to foreign audiences and were not produces by Ford. Further, Ford clarified that the “U.S. Copyright Act does not apply to such extraterritorial conduct and, independently, liability under the U.S. Copyright Act cannot be based on corporate affiliation alone.”
Ford is now countersuing Freeplay Music, for false advertising and is also claiming unspecified damages, court costs and attorneys’ fees.

Court denies Taylor Swift’s motion to dismiss Infringement Lawsuit

Nathan Butler and Sean Hall and previously filed a copyright infringement suit against singer Taylor Swift, claiming that her song “Shake it Off”, infringed upon the lyrics of their own song, “Playas Gon’ Play”. The disputed lyrics as Butler and Hall claim to have originally written are, “Playas, they gonna play And haters, they gonna hate”, and a modified version of this with some additions has been used by Taylor Swift in her song.
Following this Taylor Swift filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which was granted to the singer, by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. However, this dismissal was recently reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit was of the opinion that the lawsuit filed by Butler and Hall, “plausibly alleged originality”, due to which the lawsuit cannot be dismissed as a matter of law.
 
Authored and compiled by  Neharika Vhatkar (Associate, BananaIP Counsels) 
The Copyright Law News Bulletin is brought to you jointly by the Entertainment Law and Consulting/Strategy Divisions of BananaIP Counsels, a Top IP Firm in India. If you have any questions, or need any clarifications, please write to contact@bananaip.com  with the subject:  Copyright Law News
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