Judge Katherine Forrest
Regulatory Fundamentals Group (RFG) provides a database of original articles (RFG Pathfinder), and the RFG Watch, RFG Deep Dives and RFG Weekly Roundup emails. Under agreement with Governance Risk Management Compliance (GRMC), customers acquired through GRMC would access the RFG Pathfinder and RFG Watch services via an RFG web site. GRMC and its codefendants allegedly created derivative works, and displayed RFG’s works on Manhattan Advisers’ web site contrary to Copyright Act §501. Despite being given the opportunity to do so, RFG’s amended complaint did not raise a contract breach claim. The court did not dismiss RFG’s amended complaint for failure to allege copyright infringement because it sounded in contract breach. It noted that under certain circumstances, there is a cause of action under copyright law where a party allegedly exceeded a license agreement so as to infringe on a licensor’s copyrighted works. Defendants, were ordered to seek summary judgment, which will either dispose of the litigation or narrow the issues therein.
