Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
A recent copyright ruling involving embedded Tweets of quarterback Tom Brady has created alarm among the digital media, where photos are embedded and linked to on a routine basis. In a copyright infringement case that could have a far-reaching impact on anyone who uses images on a blog or website, the Southern District of New York considered how photos are shown on one site but stored on another site’s server implicate the image owner’s exclusive display right under the federal Copyright Act.
District Court Judge Katherine Forrest held that when news organization defendants embedded Tweets on their web pages, they violated the plaintiff’s display right, and “the fact that the image was hosted on a server owned and operated by an unrelated third party (Twitter) does not shield them from this result.”
Plaintiff Justin G. took a photo of New England Patriots quarterback Brady with the Boston Celtics manager in East Hampton, N.Y., in 2016. He uploaded it to his Snapchat page, where it went viral with the help of Twitter. Several news outlets including defendants Breitbart, Time Inc., and the Boston Globe then embedded the Tweeted image in their articles. Justin sued under the Copyright Act, claiming he never licensed the rights to display his photo. The other named defendants include Yahoo!, Vox Media and Gannett.
“A review of the legislative history reveals that the drafters of the 1976 Amendments [to the Act] intended copyright protection to broadly encompass new, and not yet understood, technologies,” Judge Forrest wrote, addressing the law’s application to the new frontier of social media. Continue reading ›