Judge Paul Engelmayer
Ishayev and Leykina allegedly infringed copyrights held by Pearson Education and its co-plaintiffs by selling unauthorized copies of instructors' solutions manuals over the Internet. The court denied both parties summary judgment. It found the instructors' manuals derivative works but was persuaded by the weight of authority concluding that an unregistered derivative work is protected from infringement only to the extent it reproduces protected material from the underlying registered work. However, defendants did not present evidence that the subject manuals lacked more than de minimis material from the underlying registered textbooks. The court granted defendants judgment as to Leykina's violation of the Copyright Act. Her PayPal account was used only in connection with the sending of hyperlinks not themselves constituting infringement. Infringement claims against Ishayev concerning hyperlink-accessible materials survived dismissal. Ishayev's distribution of zip files of manuals created by plaintiffs was a basis on which a reasonable juror could infer that he uploaded the infringing files to a website. The court dismissed Ishayev's counterclaim asserting libel due to failure to satisfy at least two of the five elements for libel.
