District of Massachusetts reduces jury-awarded damages by 90 percent in copyright infringement lawsuit By Abby Lauer – Edited by Jad Mills Sony BMG Music Entertainment et. al. v. Tenenbaum, No. 07cv11446-NG (D. Mass. July 9, 2010) Slip Opinion In a decision by Judge Nancy Gertner, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts reduced the damages awarded by a jury to members of the recording industry in a copyright infringement lawsuit. After finding defendant Joel Tenenbaum guilty of ... Read More...

Another Win for the Record Companies in an Inducement Claim Against Lime Wire By Sharona Hakimi – Edited By Ryan Ward Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC, No. 06 CV 5936 (KMW) (S.D.N.Y. May 11, 2010) Slip Opinion On May 11, 2010, the Southern District Court of New York granted summary judgment against Lime Wire for inducing copyright infringement of Arista Records’ music, but denied summary judgment for either side on Arista’s contributory infringement claim. The court held that ... Read More...

By Kassity Liu India’s Stringent Patentability Standards Cause Corporate Dissatisfaction On February 12, the WSJ Law Blog reported that India’s standards for patentability may be leading to a lack of significant patent protection for important pharmaceutical drugs. Before 2005, India offered patent protection to processes for making pharmaceutical drugs, but no protection to the products themselves. After the patent system was extended to cover the products, a large number of multinational drug companies began to market their products in India. ... Read More...

First Circuit Explains Judgment Against File-Sharer Tannenbaum By Eric Engle  – Edited by Miriam Weiler Sony BMG Music Entertainment et al. v. Tannenbaum, Case No. 07cv11446-NG (Dist. Mass., Dec. 7, 2009) Memorandum and Order The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts elaborated on its July 27 summary judgment against Joel Tannenbaum, holding that file sharing for personal use was not presumptively fair under the Fair Use doctrine.  In so holding, the court suggested that Tannenbaum could have escaped ... Read More...

By Stephanie Weiner – Edited by Evelyn Breithaupt On July 31, a Boston federal jury ordered physics Ph.D student Joel Tenenbaum to pay $675,000 in damages to various recording companies for willfully infringing 30 songs by downloading them over KaZaA — an award of $22,500 per song. It was only the second file-sharing case to go to verdict in the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) anti-downloading litigation campaign, along with that of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, though thousands are settled or ... Read More...