Judge Tosses Out Foreign YouTube Lawsuits; Points Out Basic Copyright Law [Updated]

from the you-would-think-their-lawyers-would-notice-this dept

Admittedly, parts of copyright law are quite complicated, but there are some basics that are rather simple and straightforward: such as that you cannot sue for statutory or punitive damages if you haven't registered your copyrights with the US copyright office. So, when the Premiere Football League sued Google/YouTube for hosting some videos of matches two years ago, I assumed at the very least that it had registered its copyrights in the US. Apparently not. A judge has tossed out pushed back on the Premier League's attempt to get higher damages awards, along with some other foreign claimants' for not being covered by US copyright law. You would have thought this was something the Premier League's lawyers would have noticed before filing the lawsuit. Update: Eric Goldman has a lot more details on the specifics of the case, which the original News.com article was a bit misleading. Definitely make sure you read Goldman's post to understand the mixed nature of the ruling. Also, based on this we're updating some of the points in the post to clarify. Thanks to everyone who pointed out some of the specifics. Update 2: After discussing this with a few different lawyers (as per usual -- none of them agree with each other!) it seemed best to just point people to Eric's analysis of this decision. Once again, this is what's great about using this blog as a conversation, helping us all to learn. Thanks to everyone who chimed in and contributed (whether via comments or email).

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