Do copyright owners need an issued copyright registration or only a pending application to enforce their copyright in federal court? The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide this question. The Copyright Act provides that "no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until ... registration of the copyright claim has been made ...."  The circuit courts of appeal that have considered this question reached different [...]

The story begins in July 2016, when Justin Goldman was walking in the streets of New York City. Goldman spotted American football quarterback Tom Brady meeting with the Boston Celtics manager. He took a hurried picture with his phone and added it to the "My Story" section of his private Snapchat. Not long after, one of Goldman's followers took a copy of the image and uploaded it to Reddit. The picture quickly began to [...]

A federal district court in the Northern District of California granted plaintiff XpertUniverse's (XU) motion for partial summary judgment on collateral estoppel and precluded defendant Cisco Systems from raising new invalidity grounds. The court also denied Cisco's motion for judgment on the pleadings under 35 U.S.C. § 101. In a previous lawsuit between the parties (the "First Action"), Cisco's Remote Expert product was found to infringe XU's U.S. Patent No. 7,499,903 (the "'903 Patent") and [...]