Seaton v. TripAdvisor, US 6th Cir. (8/28/13)
Communications Law, Constitutional Law, Injury Law, Internet Law
Grand Resort, which has operated in the Great Smoky Mountains since 1982, claims that TripAdvisor’s publication of a survey that concluded that Grand Resort was the dirtiest hotel in America caused irreparable damage to its business and that TripAdvisor used a flawed rating system that distorted actual performance and perspective. The district court dismissed, reasoning that the “dirtiest hotels” list is protected opinion; it reflects TripAdvisor’s users’ subjective opinions and is not capable of being defamatory. The court rejected a motion to amend to add claims of trade libel-injurious falsehood and tortious interference with prospective business relationships to the claims of false light-invasion of privacy and of defamation. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, noting that amendment of the complaint would be futile.
nd the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1051 et seq., because Green Day used plaintiff’s illustration, “Scream Icon,” in the video backdrop of its stage show. On appeal, plaintiff challenged the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Green Day on all claims and the grant of attorney’s fees to Green Day under the Copyright Act. The court concluded that Green Day’s use of the illustration was fair use under the Copyright Act where the purpose and character of the use was transformative and not overly commercial; the nature of the work included its status as a widely disseminated work of street art; Green Day’s use of the work was not excessive in light of its transformative purpose; and Green Day’s use did not affect the value of the piece or of plaintiff’s artwork in general. In regards to plaintiff’s claims under the Lanham Act, the court concluded that plaintiff failed to establish any trademark rights. The court concluded, however, that the district court clearly erred in finding that plaintiff’s claims were objectively unreasonable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment but vacated the award of attorneys fees.
Retired Hall of Fame football player, James “Jim” Brown, filed suit against EA, alleging that EA violated section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1125(a), through the use of Brown’s likeness in EA’s “Madden NFL” series of football video games. The court rejected the “likelihood of confusion” test and the “alternative means” test, concluding that the only relevant legal framework for balancing the public’s right to be free from consumer confusion about Brown’s affiliation with “Madden NFL” and EA’s First Amendment rights in the context of Brown’s section 43(a) claim was the Rogers v. Grimaldi test. Applying the Rogers test, the court concluded that the use of Brown’s likeness was artistically relevant to the “Madden NFL” games and that there were no alleged facts to support the claim that EA explicitly mislead consumers as to Brown’s involvement with the games. In this case, the public interest in free expression outweighed the public interest in avoiding consumer confusion. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court’s grant of EA’s motion to dismiss.
In 1982 Hobbs was working as a photographer on a Russian cruise ship where he had a brief affair with a Russian waitress. Based on the experience, he wrote a song, “Natasha” about an ill-fated romance between a man from the U.K. and a Ukrainian woman. In 1983, he registered his copyright to “Natasha” in the United Kingdom and sent the song to several music publishers, including a company that published songs composed by Elton John and Bernard Taupin. Hobbs’s efforts to find a publisher for “Natasha” were unsuccessful. In 1985, Elton John released his very successful song, “Nikita,” in which a singer from “the west” describes his love for Nikita, whom the singer saw “by the wall” and who is on the other side of a “line” held in by “guns and gates.” Hobbs filed a copyright infringement claim 27 years later. The district court dismissed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding that the songs were not substantially similar. The Copyright Act does not protect general ideas, such as a romance between a western man and a woman from behind the iron curtain, but only the particular expression of an idea.
Myriad obtained patents after discovering the precise location and sequence of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, mutations of which can dramatically increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The discovery enabled Myriad to develop medical tests for detecting mutations for assessing cancer risk. Myriad’s patents would give it the exclusive rights to isolate an individual’s BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and to synthetically create BRCA composite DNA. The district court entered summary judgment, finding the patents invalid under 35 U.S.C. 101 because they covered products of nature. On remand following the Supreme Court’s decision, Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs, Inc., the Federal Circuit found both isolated DNA and composite DNA patent-eligible. The Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part, noting that the case did not involve “method claims” for new applications of knowledge about the genes or the patentability of DNA in which the order of the naturally occurring nucleotides has been altered. A naturally-occurring DNA segment is not patent-eligible merely because it has been isolated, but composite DNA is patent-eligible because it is not naturally-occurring. Myriad did not create or alter the genetic information encoded in the genes or the genetic structure of the DNA. Even brilliant discovery does not alone satisfy the section 101 inquiry. Myriad’s claims are not saved by the fact that isolating DNA from the human genome severs chemical bonds that bind gene molecules together. The claims are not expressed in terms of chemical composition, nor do they rely on the chemical changes resulting from the isolation of a particular DNA section. Composite DNA, however, is not a “product of nature;” a lab technician unquestionably creates something new when introns are removed from a DNA sequence to make composite DNA.
Maryland v King
Tennis Channel, a sports programming network and intervenor in this suit, filed a complaint against Comcast Cable, a multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD), alleging that Comcast violated section 616 of the Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C. 536(a)(3), and the Commission’s regulations by refusing to broadcast Tennis as widely as it did its own affiliated sports programming networks, Golf Channel and Versus. An ALJ ruled against Comcast, ordering that it provide Tennis carriage equal to what it afforded Golf and Versus, and the Commission affirmed. The court concluded that Comcast prevailed with its third set of arguments on appeal, that even under the Commission’s interpretation of section 616, the Commission had failed to identify adequate evidence of unlawful discrimination. The Commission had nothing to refute Comcast’s contention that its rejection of Tennis’s proposal was simply “a straight up financial analysis.” Accordingly, the court granted the petition.
In 1993, Lancaster, a former police officer with a long history of severe mental-health problems, killed his girlfriend. At his jury trial in Michigan state court, Lancaster asserted a defense of diminished capacity. Under then-prevailing Michigan Court of Appeals precedent, the diminished-capacity defense permitted a legally sane defendant to present evidence of mental illness to negate the specific intent required to commit a particular crime. The jury convicted him of first-degree murder. Lancaster later obtained federal habeas relief. By the time of Lancaster’s retrial, the Michigan Supreme Court had rejected the diminished-capacity defense in its 2001 decision, Carpenter. The judge at his second trial applied Carpenter and disallowed renewal of his diminished-capacity defense. Lancaster was again convicted. The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected Lancaster’s argument that retroactive application of Carpenter violated due process. Lancaster reasserted his due process claim in a federal habeas petition. The district court denied the petition, but the Sixth Circuit reversed. A unanimous Supreme Court reversed, holding that Lancaster is not entitled to federal habeas relief. The Michigan Court of Appeals’ rejection of Lancaster’s due process claim does not represent an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent, 28 U. S. C.2254(d)(1). In Carpenter, the Michigan Supreme Court rejected a diminished-capacity defense, reasonably finding the defense to have no origin in an on-point statute. The Supreme Court has never found a due process violation where a state supreme court, squarely addressing a particular issue for the first time, rejected a consistent line of lower court decisions based on the supreme court’s reasonable interpretation of a controlling statute. Fair-minded jurists could conclude that a state supreme court decision of that order is not “unexpected and indefensible by reference to [existing] law.”
