Jay Spillane Listed Among Top Digital and E-Commerce Lawyers

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By Staff

The Los Angeles Business Journal included Jay Spillane among 27 other prestigious lawyers in its “Most Influential Lawyers: Digital Media and E-Commerce Law” list published July 21, 2014. Among a list of largely large firm lawyers, Jay stands out as a small firm lawyer taking on high-stakes litigation.

“In the area of Internet litigation, he enjoys the reputation of being the lawyer a company must hire if they are being sued for online infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or the Communications Decency Act,” wrote the LABJ.

To read more, follow this link: https://www.cbjonline.com/a2labj/supplements/MostInfluentialLawyers_20140721.pdf read more

Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley

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In “Hollywood Versus Silicon Valley,” I wrote of a series of epic court battles – Napster, Grokster, Youtube – that pitted Hollywood companies, owners of copyrighted content, in court against Silicon Valley innovators, creators of Internet technologies that enabled information sharing but also trading in infringing works.  The court battles against Napster and Grokster lead to the demise of those services.  In the case of Youtube, by contrast, Youtube co-opted some potential adversaries by engaging them with licensing/channel agreements, and has largely convinced the courts that it has complied with copyright law by acting promptly in response to takedown notices from copyright owners. read more

U.S. Supreme Court’s Petrella Presages Significant Increase in Copyright Lawsuits

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Frank Petrella wrote three works, including a 1963 screenplay, about the life of boxer Jake LaMotta. Both Petrella and LaMotta assigned rights to make a motion picture based upon these works. United Artists, a division of MGM, used the rights to make the hit 1980 film “Raging Bull.” Petrella died in 1981.

A twist in the copyright law provides that under certain circumstances a deceased author’s heirs may renew copyright in the author’s work free of any assignments the author made during his lifetime.

Paula Petrella, Frank Patella’s daughter and heir, renewed the copyright in the 1963 screenplay in 1991. Beginning in 1998, Paula Petrella’s counsel wrote MGM to assert that she now owned the rights to the 1963 screenplay, which MGM needed to license from her for any continued exploitation of “Raging Bull.” read more

Ten-Year-Old ‘Perfect 10 v. CCBill’ Decision Withstands Test of Time

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June marked the ten-year anniversary of the trial court’s Perfect 10 v. CCBill decision, one of the earliest — and still one of the most important — decisions determining Internet Service Providers (“ISP’s”) liability for the content of third parties on hosted sites. I had the privilege of being part of the team representing CCBill in this bet-the-company case, accomplishing a win that helped establish the Internet as the ubiquitous place it is today.

The Internet has afforded astonishing new channels for lawful commerce as well as unlawful activities. Previously, to engage in widespread libel or infringement one needed access to print media.  read more

Spillane Trial Group Saves Pope Francis’ Favorite Film

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Fans of ‘Babette’s Feast’ Will Have Continued Access to The Film in Modern Media

The lawsuit to determine Spillane Trial Group client Josi W. Konski’s copyright ownership of Babette’s Feast, winner of the 1988 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, settled during trial this month. As a result, Konski’s rights to resume and expand upon his re-release of the film in Blu-ray and DVD formats were confirmed.  Konski agreed to pay royalties to the estate of Gabriel Axel, the late director of the film, pursuant to a modified royalty agreement.

Babette’s Feast received recent attention as Pope Francis’s favorite film.  read more