About 6 months ago, Silicon Valley VC firm Kleiner Perkins won a jury verdict in former employee Ellen Pao’s high-profile gender discrimination jury trial. (See the Law Talk discussion of the verdict here.)

A few weeks later, an interesting (and expected) follow-up issue emerged: litigation costs. Pursuant to the “American Rule” that sometimes shifts a lawsuit winner’s costs to the loser, Kleiner asked Ms. Pao to reimburse its litigation costs in the amount of $973,000. But in an unusual twist, Kleiner offered to waive its right to recover litigation costs if Ms. Pao agreed not to appeal the trial court decision. Christina Lee, a spokeswoman for Kleiner, had the following explanation in a statement quoted in several newspapers and magazines at that time: “We believe that women in technology would be best served by having all parties focus on making progress on the issues of gender diversity outside of continued litigation.” Law Talk discussed these litigation cost issues here, and concluded with the anticipatory “to be continued.”

In June, Ms. Pao proceeded with an appeal.

And just last week, Ms. Pao announced that she was dropping her appeal, and without any settlement agreeement.  According to a statement that she released to the Wall Street Journal, Kleiner offered her a settlement agreement with financial benefits (presumably forgiveness of the debt concerning court costs), but only if she refrained from “disparaging” Kleiner.  She said in her statement: “Settlement might have provided me with financial benefits, but only at the great cost of silence. I feel gratified that my actions have encouraged others to speak up about discrimination in venture capital and technology more broadly. I am encouraged that companies are taking more action to quantify and address the disparity of opportunities for women and minorities.”

Despite her refusal to “sell” her ability to speak out, she nonetheless explained her decision to drop the appeal as being financial, saying that she could no longer afford to continue.  (An article in the Huffington Post provides more details.)

It’s still not clear how much of Kleiner’s costs Ms. Pao needs to pay.  She’s reportedly paying $276,000 (down from the $973,000 requested in April), but a Fortune article analyzes several aspects of uncertainty about the final amount that she’s paying, and concludes that “this is all over. Sort of. »

So we have an incomplete dénoument or coda, depending on your preferred art form metaphor.

To be continued? Maybe, and maybe not . . .

A federal judge in California ruled a few weeks ago that Spanish law applied to a dispute before his court. He then applied Spanish law to resolve the dispute.

This wasn’t just any dispute, however. At the center of the dispute was a painting, Rue St. Honoré, après midi, effet de pluie, by French impressionist Camille Pissarro (the “Painting”).

The Painting is currently in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. It arrived there indirectly as a result of the Nazi regime’s expropriation of art from its owner Lilly Cassirer Neubauer.  The plaintiffs seeking to recover the painting are members of her family.

The court’s approach is in a sense a relatively straightforward one.  First, the court had to resolve the “choice of law” question and decide whose law should apply to resolve the dispute before the court. Judge John Walter ruled that Spanish law should apply: “although plaintiffs’ relationship to California is significant, the painting’s relationship to California is not.” Having chosen Spanish law, the court then had to apply it. Judge Walter concluded that Spanish law wouldn’t require the painting’s return to the plaintiffs, because the museum “was not an accessory to the crime committed by the Nazis.”

Judge Walter also recognized that law and justice don’t always coincide.  He ended his decision with an extraordinary recommendation in anticipation of an appeal:

Although the Foundation has now prevailed in this prolonged and bitterly contested litigation, the Court recommends that, before the next phase of litigation commences in the Ninth Circuit, the Foundation pause, reflect, and consider whether it would be appropriate to work towards a mutually-agreeable resolution of this action, in light of Spain’s acceptance of the Washington Conference Principles and the Terezin Declaration, and, specifically, its commitment to achieve “just and fair solutions” for victims of Nazi persecution.

The plaintiffs last Friday did in fact appeal the ruling, as Judge Walter anticipated.  In the US federal courts, an appeal from a district court to the relevant circuit court of appeals is a matter of right—the court of appeals must  review the appeal.  (In contrast, an appeal from a federal court of appeals to the US Supreme Court is rarely reviewed—the Supreme Court selects only a tiny percentage of submitted appeals for review.)

An appeal typically addresses only issues of law, and not findings of fact.  This appeal will lead to an exchange of briefs and then an oral argument hearing before a panel of three judges of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The panel will then issue its decision.

Law Talk will come back to this issue when the Ninth Circuit acts on the appeal. In the meantime, here are a few resources for readers interested in learning more.

First, the decision by Judge Walter.

Second, a short Wikipedia article on Judge Walter.

Third, a series of articles involving this dispute and/or foreign restitution disputes in general, from the newsletter Art Law Report (published by the law firm Sullivan & Worcester) :

Fourth, Sullivan & Worcester lawyer Nicholas O’Donnell’s analysis of this decision, Cassirer and the State of Restitution—Takeaways and Next Steps.

Finally, Judge Walter’s presentation of the dispute (with most of the footnotes removed), to allow readers to fully understand the complex factual background, as well as the case’s procedural posture:

[Lilly Cassirer Neubauer (“Lilly”)] inherited the Painting in 1926. As a Jew, she was subjected to increasing persecution in Germany after the Nazis seized power in 1933. In 1939, in order for Lilly and her husband Otto Neubauer to obtain exit visas to flee Germany, Lilly was forced to transfer the Painting to Jakob Scheidwimmer, a Nazi art appraiser. In “exchange,” Scheidwimmer transferred 900 Reichsmarks (around $360 at 1939 exchange rates), well below the actual value of the painting, into a blocked account that Lilly could never access. After the war, Lilly filed a timely restitution claim. Because the location of the Painting was unknown, Lilly ultimately settled her claim for monetary compensation with the German government, but did not waive her right to seek restitution or return of the Painting.

Without Lilly’s knowledge, the Painting surfaced in the United States in 1951. In July 1951, the Painting was sold to collector Sydney Brody in Los Angeles, California through art dealers M. Knoedler & Co. in New York and Frank Perls Gallery in Beverly Hills, California. The Frank Perls Gallery earned a commission of $3,105 for arranging the sale of the Painting to Sydney Brody. Less than a year later, in May 1952, Sydney Schoenberg, an art collector in St. Louis, Missouri, purchased the Painting from M. Knoedler & Co., on consignment from the Frank Perls Gallery, for $16,500.

 More than twenty years later, on November 18, 1976, Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza of Lugano, Switzerland (the “Baron”) purchased the Painting through New York art dealer Stephen Hahn for $275,000. The Painting was maintained as part of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Switzerland until 1992, except when on public display in exhibitions outside Switzerland.

In 1988, the Baron and Spain agreed that the Baron (through one of his entities, FavoritaTrustees Limited) would loan his art collection (the “Collection”), including the Painting, to the Kingdom of Spain. Pursuant to the 1988 Loan Agreement, Spain established the Foundation, a non-profit, private cultural foundation to maintain, conserve, publicly exhibit, and promote artwork from the Collection. The Spanish government agreed to display the Collection at the Villahermosa Palace in Madrid, Spain, which would be restored and redesigned for its new purpose as theThyssen-Bornemisza Museum (the “Museum”). On June 22, 1992, the Museum received the Painting, and, on October 10, 1992, opened to the public with the Painting on display.

Spain later sought to purchase the Collection. On June 18, 1993, the Spanish cabinet passed Real Decreto-Ley 11/1993, authorizing the government to sign a contract allowing the Foundation to purchase the 775 artworks that comprised the Collection. In accordance with Real Decreto-Ley 11/1993, on June 21, 1993, the Kingdom of Spain, the Foundation, and Favorita Trustees Limited entered into an Acquisition Agreement, by which Favorita Trustees Limited sold the Collection to the Foundation.[FOOTNOTE 5]

[START OF FOOTNOTE 5] In 1989 and 1993, in connection with the loan and ultimate purchase of the Collection, Spain and the Foundation commissioned an investigation of title to verify that the Baron and his relevant entities had clear and marketable title to the Collection. Plaintiffs claim that the investigation was incomplete and that Spain and the Foundation ignored red flags concerning thePainting’s provenance, including, for example, that: (1) the Stephen Hahn Gallery had been affiliated with Nazi looting; (2) paintings by Pissarro were known to be the frequent subjects of Nazi looting; and (3) the back of the Painting has a “Berlin” label traceable to the Cassirer Gallery and the provenance documentation provided no explanation for that label. However, this disputed issue as to the Foundation’s alleged “bad faith” is not material or relevant to the Court’s decision on these motions. [END OF FOOTNOTE]

The Foundation’s purchase of the Collection for $338 million was entirely funded by Spain. The Painting has been on public display at the Foundation’s Museum in Madrid, Spain since the Museum’s opening on October 10, 1992, except when on public display in a 1996 exhibition outside of Spain and while on loan at the Caixa Forum in Barcelona, Spain from October 2013 to January 2014. Since the Foundation purchased the Painting in 1993, the Painting’s location and the Foundation’s “ownership” have been identified in several publications including: (1) Wivel, Mikael: Ordrupgaard. Selected Works. Copenhague, Ordrupgaard, 1993, p. 44; (2) Rosenblum, Robert: “Impressionism. The City and Modern Life”. En Impressionists in Town. [Cat. Exp.].Copenhague, Ordrupgaard, 1996, n. 17, pp. 16-17, il. 61.; (3) Llorens, Tomas; Borobia, Mar y Alarcó, Paloma: Obras Maestras. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid, Fundación CollectiónThyssen-Bornemisza, 2000, p. 156, il. p. 157; and (4) Perez-Jofre, T.: Grandes obras de arte. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Colonia, Tascnen, 2001, p. 540, il. p. 541. Declaration of Evelio Acevedo Carrero [Docket No. 249-2] at ¶ 18.

Neither Lilly nor any of her heirs attempted to locate the Painting between 1958 and late 1999, and Claude Cassirer, Lilly’s heir, did not discover that the Painting was on display at the Museum until sometime in 2000. On May 3, 2001, he filed a Petition with the Kingdom of Spain and the Foundation, seeking return of the Painting. On May 10, 2005, after his Petition to return the Painting was rejected, Claude Cassirer filed this action against the Kingdom of Spain and the Foundation, seeking the return of the Painting, or an award of damages in the event the Court isunable to order the return of the Painting. From 1980 to the time of his death on September 25, 2010, Claude Cassirer lived in California. 

After extensive motion practice, including two appeals to the Ninth Circuit, the Foundation now moves for summary judgment on the grounds that: (1) under Swiss or Spanish law, the Foundation is the owner of the Painting; (2) California Code of Civil Procedure § 338(c), as amended in 2010, violates the Foundation’s due process rights by retroactively depriving the Foundation of its vested property rights; and (3) Plaintiffs’ claims are barred by laches. Plaintiffs move for summary adjudication, seeking an order declaring that the substantive law of the State of California governs, and that the law of Spain does not govern, the merits of this dispute.

In the summer of 2008, primarily to address the subprime mortgage crisis, the US Congress passed, and President Bush signed, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.  One division of that act, called the Federal Housing Finance Regulatory Reform Act of 2008, merged some existing government agencies to create the Federal Housing Finance Agency (the “FHFA”).

Since then, the FHFA oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two pre-existing government-sponsored private entities whose mortgage-backed bond activity has long provided liquidity to banks for originating home loans. In the midst of the financial crisis, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were extremely frgaile, and a month after its creation, the FHFA put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship.  (You can read more about these background events in this Wikipedia article.)

Among the FHFA’s actions as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was the filing of 16 lawsuits against financial firms, alleging misrepresentation in bond-related documents.  If true, the alleged misrepresentations would be violations of both federal and state securities laws.

Most of the firms settled (for $17.9 billion collectively).  However, two firms, Nomura Securities and Royal Bank of Scotland, chose to go to trial. (See this January article from Bloomberg on Nomura’s refusal to settle.)

The trial started in March, and closing arguments were in April.  Because the prayer for relief that remained at trial didn’t include damages, but was rather a request for equitable relief (to have the defendants repurchase the securities), the defendants had no right to a jury.  As a result, the judge not only presided over the trial but was also the finder of facts. And just a few days ago, Judge Denise Cote of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York issued her 361-page ruling, finding for the FHFA.  Her decision opens with the following introduction:

“This case is complex from almost any angle, but at its core there is a single, simple question.  Did defendants accurately describe the home mortgages in the offering documents for the securities they sold that were backed by those mortgages?  Following trial, the answer to that question is clear.  The offering documents did not correctly describe the mortgage loans.  The magnitude of falsity, conservatively measured, is enormous.”

The decision contains no final judgment amount, instead directing the FHFA to submit a proposed amount in conformity with a formula in the opinion.  (The FHFA had initially sought over $1 billion.)

You can read the decision here.  It’s long, but it’s indispensable reading if you want to understand the complex reality underpinning the lawsuit.

Law Talk also recommends the Michael Lewis book The Big Short.  Not only does it help make the complex reality of toxic collateralized mortage obligations somewhat understandable, it’s also a pleasure to read (as are all Michael Lewis books).

A few weeks ago, Silicon Valley VC firm Kleiner Perkins won a jury verdict in former employee Ellen Pao’s high-profile gender discrimination jury trial. (See the Law Talk discussion of the verdict here.)   An interesting (and expected) follow-up issue has now emerged: litigation costs.

In the United States, the winning party’s attorneys’ fees and litigation costs are generally not paid by the losing party. This rule, often called the “American Rule,” is subject to fee- and cost-shifting provisions found in contracts or statutes. (The contrasting “English Rule” would generally impose on the losing party the obligation to pay the winning party’s attorneys’ fees and litigation costs.)  Ms. Pao’s lawsuit was brought under a California Government Code statute prohibiting gender-based discrimination, and that statute provides for a losing defendant to pay a winning plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees and litigation costs.  It also provides for a losing plaintiff to pay a winning defendant’s litigation costs, but not attorneys’ fees.

Pursuant to this cost-shifting provision, Kleiner is now asking Ms. Pao to reimburse its litigation costs in the amount of $972,814: $864,680 in expert witness fees, $59,000 in deposition costs, and $40,000 in other costs. You can see here the memorandum of costs that Kleiner’s lawyers filed with the court.

Even more interesting, Kleiner is reportedly offering to waive its right to recover litigation costs if Ms. Pao agrees not to appeal the trial court decision. Christina Lee, a spokeswoman for Kleiner, had the following explanation in a statement quoted in several newspapers and magazines (including Forbes): “We believe that women in technology would be best served by having all parties focus on making progress on the issues of gender diversity outside of continued litigation.”

To be continued . . . .

French lawyers who work with American clients know that the American legal and business communities held their breath this past week waiting for the jury in a San Francisco courtroom to deliver its verdict in an employment-related lawsuit involving a legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm.  Today’s Law Talk helps French lawyers (and any other readers) understand what happened.

The defendant: Kleiner Perkins Caufiel & Byers, the VC firm that provided early funding for many prominent companies, including Facebook, Google, Genentech, and Amazon.

The plaintiff: Ellen Pao, a former lawyer who joined Kleiner Perkins in 2005 and was made a “junior investing partner” in 2007, and who was asked to leave the firm in 2012 (a few months after filing the complaint in this case).

The complaint: In 2012, having been passed over for promotion to full partner, Ms. Pao filed a complaint in California Superior Court.  The complaint asserted three causes of action: gender discrimination, retaliation, and failure to take reasonable steps to prevent discrimination, all in violation of California Government Code Section 12940.

The amount at stake: Ms. Pao had asked the jury to award $16 million in compensatory damages (based on the foregone higher compensation that she would have received had she become a full partner).  For any finding of liability, the jury was also allowed to award punitive damages, which in theory would both reform this defendant and deter others from enaging in similar conduct.  A typical cap on punitive damages in California is 9 times the amount of compensatory damages.  Between the compensatory damages and the punitive damages, the amount at stake was nearly $160 million.

The jury vedict: Friday, nearly 3 years after the filing of the complaint, the jury delivered its verdict, specifically answering 4 questions. For each answer, the jury majority needed to be 9 out of 12, and the standard of proof was a preponderance of the evidence (ie, “more likely than not”).  Here are the questions and in each case the jury’s answer:

1.  Did Kleiner Perkins discriminate against Ms. Pao because of her gender by failing to promote her and by terminating her employment?  The jury answered no.

2. Did Kleiner Perkins retaliate against her by failing to promote her because she had conversations with partners about the discrimination in December 2011 and/or because she gave a memorandum about the discrimination to the firm on Jan. 4, 2012?  The jury answered no.

3.  Did Kleiner Perkins retaliate against her by terminating her employment because of either/or her memo and her suit?  The jury answered no.

4.  Did Kleiner Perkins fail to take all reasonable steps to prevent gender discrimination against her?  The jury answered no.

Some of the primary legal documents:  There’s no shortage of commentary about this case (some of the better articles are listed further down in this Law Talk), but sometimes a lawyer just wants a direct unmediated look at the primary legal documents.  We’ve gathered some of them for you:

2012 complaint.

Plaintiff’s trial brief.

Defendant’s trial brief.

Jury instructions.

Verdict form to be filled out by the jury (a distillation of the jury instructions, essentially an algorithm to guide the deliberations).

About the lawyers and the judge:  They’ve been all over the American press lately, and you might be curious to know more about them.  The lead counsel for Kleiner Perkins was Lynn Hermle of Orrick Herrington and Sutcliffe.  Here’s her bio page on the Orrick site.  (You might know some Orrick lawyers:  since Orrick’s 2006 merger with Rambaud Martel, they have a Paris office.)  The lead counsel for Ms. Pao was Allan Exelrod of Rudy, Exelrod, Zieff & Lowe.  Here’s his bio page on the Rezlaw site.  Co-lead counsel was Therese Lawless of Lawless & Lawless.  Here’s her bio page on the Lawless website.  The judge was Harold Kahn, named to the bench in 2002 by then-Governor Gray Davis.  Here’s his not-very-informative Wikipedia page, and here’s a 2002 newspaper profile of him, shortly after he took the bench.

Interesting commentary:  Now that the jury has issued its verdict, much of the recent press coverage has lost its interest, but here are two pre-verdict articles with enduring value.  First, the New York Times magazine published an article on the industry background and what was really at stake.  Second, the New Yorker magazine published an article on what we mean by “discrimination.”

What’s ahead:  A complaint was just filed against Twitter, asserting gender discrimination.  While the Pao v. Kleiner Perkins case was interesting, it was limited to one specific plaintiff.  In contrast, the Twitter complaint seeks certification of a whole plaintiff class.  (Go back and read again the Law Talk from early February on class-action lawsuits.)  We’re going to hear a lot more about the Twitter case . . . .

The intersection of music and US copyright law is in the news, thanks to the recent jury verdict regarding the song “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, T.I., and Pharrell Williams. “Blurred Lines” created a sensation in 2013, not only for catchy music that led to the sale of nearly 15 million singles, but also for lyrics and a video that Robin Thicke himself admitted in an interview in the magazine GQ are degrading to women. (He later said that the admission was an ironic joke, and that in fact the lyrics and the video are pro-feminist and liberating for women, but not many people seem to agree.)

The writers of the song openly acknowledged heavy sampling of Marvin Gaye’s song “Got To Give It Up.”  The owners of the rights to that song—Marvin Gaye’s surviving family members— thought that the sampling crossed the line separating permissible and impermissible borrowing, and made an accusation of copyright infringement in out-of-court communications. In response, and in anticipation of a lawsuit, the three writers of “Blurred Lines” went to federal court seeking declaratory relief: they wanted a court judgment confirming that “Blurred Lines” was not a copyright infringement (with respect not only to Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up,” but also the Funkadelic song “Sexy Ways” owned today by Bridgeport Music). See the complaint here.

The Gaye family and Bridgeport Music counterclaimed, seeking damages.  After discovery, the “Blurred Lines” artists moved for summary judgment, asserting that there were no relevant facts in dispute and asking the judge to rule as a matter of law that there was no copyright infringement. The judge disagreed with them, and allowed the dispute to proceed to a trial.  See the judge’s summary judgment decision here.

Foreign lawyers, take note: an appeal in the US is generally based on an alleged mistake of law, so one likely basis of any appeal is this summary judgment decision.

Details of many of the pre-trial procedural maneuvers can be found here.  Bridgeport Music reached a settlement, but the Gaye family claim proceeded to trial.  And just last week, the jury in the case issued a verdict in favor of the Gaye family members.

There’s no shortage of critical commentary by IP law scholars, IP law practitioners, musicians, and other informed observers.  As  Columbia professor Tim Wu put it in The New Yorker magazine:

A serious error has been made: the judge overseeing the case should never have let the case go before a jury. The ruling against Thicke was a mistake, and it should, and likely will, be reversed on appeal . . . The question is not whether Pharrell borrowed from Gaye but whether Gaye owned the thing that was borrowed. And this is where the case falls apart. For it was not any actual sequence of notes that Pharrell borrowed, but rather the general style of Gaye’s songs. That is why “Blurred Lines” sounds very much like a Marvin Gaye song. But to say that something “sounds like” something else does not amount to copyright infringement.

The New York Times music critic had this to say:

Owing to the specifics of copyright law, the jury was instructed to base its decision on the sheet music, a fact that reflects how inadequate copyright law is when it comes to contemporary songwriting and production practices. In 2015, the arrangement of notes on a sheet of paper is among the least integral parts of pop music creation. We’re decades beyond the time when a songwriter penned a tune on paper, then gave it to musicians to perform. . . Besides, in an age in which popular music is incredibly diverse, with more sonic references, instruments and digital trickery available than ever, using sheet music as a measure of a song’s originality is a weak tactic, and possibly an irresponsible one. The “Blurred Lines” verdict is a victory for an outmoded law, but also an outmoded way of thinking about music.

Speaking of jury instructions, they’re the other likely basis for an appeal.  Here you can see the actual jury instructions provided in the “Blurred Lines” trial.  You IP litigators out there might enjoy comparing them with the model copyright infringement jury instructions in the 9^th federal court circuit, where the “Blurred Lines” case was adjudicated.

Here’s a contrary law professor view, finding the jury verdict “hand-wringing” but predicting that the legal issues–the summary judgment decision and the jury instructions–will be upheld on any appeal.

And here’s a practitioner comment on the evidence made available to the jury.

On the human interest side, here’s a New York Times profile of the lawyer who represented the Gaye family.

Finally, you can listen for yourself to the similarities between the two songs.  Here’s “Blurred Lines” (not the version with topless women):

And here’s a video of Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up”:

Same vibe and style, yes.  Same melody?  Not at all!

The same melody in 2 different songs really was at issue when George Harrison lost a copyright infringement lawsuit in 1976 involving his 1970 hit “My Sweet Lord” and its uncanny musical similarity to  the 1963 hit “He’s So Fine,” written by Ronnie Mack, recorded by The Chiffons, and owned at the time of the lawsuit by Bright Tunes Music.  George Harrison denied any intentional copying, and Judge Richard Owen discussed “subconscious” plagiarism in his decision:

Did Harrison deliberately use the music of “He’s So Fine”? I do not believe he did so deliberately. Nevertheless, it is clear that “My Sweet Lord” is the very same song as He’s So Fine with different words, and Harrison had access to “He’s So Fine.” This is, under the law, infringement of copyright, and is no less so even though subconsciously accomplished.

You can find the complete decision at the Music Copyright Infringement Service, a joint project of the Columbia and USC law schools.  A nifty feature lets you hear, for both the complaining work and the defending work, the complete sound recording and a rendition of just the isolated melody.  Even more nifty : a superimposition of the isolated melodies.  When you listen to the superimposition of melodies, it’s hard to disagree with Judge Owen : “My Sweet Lord” is indeed the very same song as “He’s So Fine” but with different words.

For background of and details on the “My Sweet Lord” case, see this article originally published in 910 magazine, as well as this article from the Performing Songwriter site (with several embedded videos, including the following alternate superimposition of the recorded versions of the two songs).

There was a very different outcome for John Fogerty, the songwriter and singer behind the group Creedence Clearwater Revival, when he was accused of copying . . . himself!  Among his many songs: “Run Through The Jungle,” written in 1970 and recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival; and “The Old Man Down The Road,” published in 1985 by John Fogerty as a solo artist.  “Run Through The Jungle” was owned in 1985 by Fantasty Records, and Fantasy sued Fogerty for copyright infringement–he was sued for writing a new song that was too much like his own earlier song!  A jury found in favor of defendant Fogerty.  Unfortunately for him, the court denied his request for attorney’s fees, because Fantasy hadn’t brought its suit in bad faith.  The legal fees issue went all the way up to the US Supreme Court, which clarified the standards to govern a trial court in awarding (or not) attorney’s fees in copyright disputes.  (The federal circuits had been divided on this question of statutory interpretation.)

This Law Talk will close with a preview of a class being offered at NYU :

Recycling Pop Music: Innovation, Imitation and Originality

Course description here .  Oh, to be a student with the time to study such things!