Plaintiff Enterprise Management Limited holds copyrights for the following diagram: Defendant Donald W. Warrick, who teaches in the organizational development field, copied the diagram and incorporated it in his course materials after receiving a copy from a student.  At the trial court, Warrick moved for summary judgment arguing that the diagram was not entitled to copyright protection.  The trial court granted the motion and dismissed the case. The Plaintiff appealed. Warrick argues that Plaintiff’s diagram […]

Plaintiff Donald A. Harney is a professional photographer who took a picture of a father, Clark Rockefeller, and daughter, Reigh Rockefeller, leaving church on April 1, 2007.  The photograph appeared on the front page of the local newspaper and Harney filed a copyright registration for the photograph. In July 2007, Clark Rockefeller kidnapped his daughter during a bitter divorce.  As it turned out, the name Clark Rockefeller was merely an alias and Mr. Rockefeller’s life, a […]

Plaintiff Gary Blehm is the creator of series of stick figures named “Penmen” (pictured on the left).  The defendants, Albert and John Jacobs, created their own series of stick figures named “Jake” (pictured on the right). Blehm developed the Penmen characters in the 1980’s and had several posters of the Penmen characters copyrighted.  Around 1994 defendant John Jacobs first drew Jake.  Initially Jake was just a head, but later a body was added to Jake […]

In Forest Park Pictures v. Universal Television Network, Inc., 683 F.3d 424, 2012 (2nd Cir. 2012), a television show developer filed a lawsuit against USA Network for using its television series idea without compensation. In 2005, plaintiff Forest Park Pictures developed an idea for a television show called Housecall about a doctor who was expelled from his practice for treating patients who could not pay, moved to Malibu, California to become a concierge doctor to […]