This is the weekly news update for copyright and entertainment law.
Japanese publishing giants sue Cloudflare
Four giants of manga publishing, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa, have filed a lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against American web infrastructure company Cloudflare for infringing their copyright by hosting sites that distribute pirated manga on its servers. The publishers are seeking an injunction and a combined 400 million Yen (USD 3.5 million) in damages. Kodansha claims that Cloudflare’s policy of requiring merely an email address to register for free, allows piracy sites to mask their identities. In addition, Cloudflare has enabled the operation of several piracy sites that receive advertising money and publishers claim that Cloudflare’s content delivery network is critical for pirate operators to transfer a large amount of material quickly when visitors visit their sites.
Nintendo shuts down GilvaSunner YouTube channel
YouTuber GilvaSunner who runs a popular video game music YouTube channel, announced on Twitter that they had received an additional 2,200 copyright takedown notices, following the initial 1,300 takedown notices issued by Nintendo, one of the most successful video game companies in the world. The takedowns are for streaming music tracks from 17 games, and comes despite the videos not being monetised, and Nintendo offering no official way to listen to these tracks. In line with this GilveSunner has decided to delete the YouTube channel.
FIR filed against Google’s Sundar Pichai over Copyright Violation
A First Information Report (FIR) has been registered on court orders against Google, its CEO Sundar Pichai and five other employees of the company including the managing director of Google-owned YouTube. The FIR has been registered, following a complaint of copyright infringement filed by Bollywood filmmaker Suneel Darshan for allegedly uploading the film “Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha” on YouTube without a contract or consent from the film’s producer and director. The filmmaker alleged illegal gain by allowing the film to be uploaded on YouTube and also claimed that the content was not taken down despite several emails.
Zillow ordered to pay USD 1.9million in Copyright Case
A Federal judge this week ordered Zillow, a Seattle based online real estate marketplace company, to pay total damages of USD 1.93 million along with interest as the result of a copyright infringement case from VHT, an Illinois based real estate photography company that licenses photos of homes for marketing purposes. The case stems from Zillow’s use of 2,312 of VHT’s images on a home improvement section of its website, despite receiving a cease and desist notice from VHT.
ShareChat took down 77k content pieces for Copyright Infringement
The social media platform ShareChat received 12 requests from law enforcement agencies to take down user content. Action was taken in the form of suspension of accounts and the removal of infringing content, after user data was shared with the platform. A total of 77,941 pieces of content were taken down for copyright infringement.
Authored and compiled by Neharika Vhatkar (Associate, BananaIP Counsels) and Parikha Rathi (Legal Intern)
This Copyright and Entertainment Law News Bulletin is brought to you by the Copyright and Trademark Division of BananaIP Counsels, a Top ranked IP Firm in India. Led by Sanjeeth Hegde, BananaIP Counsels’ trademark attorneys are among the leading experts in the field. If you have any questions, or need any clarifications, please write to [email protected] with the subject: Copyright News.
The weekly intellectual property law news initiative is a part of their pro bono work and is aimed at spreading awareness about intellectual property and allied laws. You are free to share the news with appropriate attribution and link back to the source.
Disclaimer:
Please note that the news bulletin has been put together from different sources, primary and secondary, and BananaIP’s reporters may not have verified all the news published in the bulletin. You may write to [email protected] for corrections and take down.
