Our first runners-up this week are Liz McNamara, Linda Steinman and their team at Davis Wright Tremaine who won a high-profile copyright fight for book publishers against the Internet Archive over its practice of scanning and lending print library books called “controlled digital lending.” U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan this week sided with the publishers—Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House—on summary judgment. The judge found the Internet Archive’s fair use defense depended on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make and distribute an unauthorized digitized copy, so long as it retains possession of the print book. “But no case or legal principle supports that notion,” Koeltl wrote. “What fair use does not allow … is the mass reproduction and distribution of complete copyrighted works in a way that does not transform those works and that creates directly competing substitutes for the originals,” he wrote. The DWT team representing the publishers also included Jack Browning, Jesse Feitel and Carl Mazurek, with co-counsel from Oppenheim + Zebrak.
Agnieszka Fryszman and Nicholas Jacques of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Edward MacAllister of the Perles Law Firm get a runners-up spot for their work paving the way for diplomatic negotiations to secure the prison release of client Paul Rusesabagina, the inspiration for the film “Hotel Rwanda.” Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C. denied a request by Rwandan officials to dismiss Rusesabagina’s lawsuit claiming they conspired to surveil, kidnap and imprison him. The judge found certain officials weren’t protected by diplomatic immunity. Rusesabagina’s legal team also includes John Arthur Eaves Jr. and Brady Eaves from the Eaves Law Firm and Steve Perles, founder of the Perles Law Firm.
