Source: https://tushnet.com/2015/08/03/photo-finish-allegedly-unauthorized-c-sublicensing-isnt-false-designation-of-origin-2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 06:02:40+00:00

Document:
PIC specializes in commercial photography. It took photos of lighting fixtures manufactured by nonparty OSI. Defendants Orgill and Farm & City Supply distribute OSI products. PIC sued them for copyright infringement; violation of the DMCA’s CMI provision, §1202, and false designation of origin/false advertising. Here the court kicks out everything but some copyright infringement claims.
Orgill is a wholesale distributor for OSI, and used product images from “e-mail, Dropbox, OSI’s external website, or OSI’s internal web server.” Whether Orgill knew about PIC’s license to OSI was disputed. OSI conducted twice-yearly reviews of its product images for five years and never challenged the way OSI images appeared. After PIC sued, OSI and Orgill executed a confirmatory copyright sublicense agreement, effective nunc pro tunc as of June 1, 2006. The sublicensing agreement also included a provision obligating Orgill to include and instruct its sublicensees/dealers to include, “to the extent reasonably possible and practical with respect to size, prominence, aesthetics, and Use, a copyright notice indicating PIC as the copyright owner of the Images.” It further covenanted not to remove any copyright notice before distributing images.
Farm & City Supply is one of Orgill’s dealers: Orgill uses an ecommerce platform that creates an online store, which dealers then brand and publish with their own names. To do so, dealers pay a flat $750 setup fee and a monthly fee. Dealers can get pictures from the platform, including the PIC images, but it’s disputed whether these fees cover those pictures. Orgill also has a product information library on an FTP server, from which dealers may download product images and other data after receiving a secure login. There’s no additional fee for using the server. Farm & City got the images at issue both from the FTP server and the ecommerce platform.
For a time, Farm & City placed a watermark reading “farmandcitysupply” across the images appearing on its eBay storefront.
Farm & City submitted undisputed evidence that it did not know PIC existed until this lawsuit was filed, that it obtained all of the images at issue from Orgill free of copyright markings, and that Orgill never advised it of any limitations on its use of the images. Moreover, since Farm & City was not party to the sublicensing agreement between OSI and Orgill, there is no indication whatsoever that it might have been aware of its duty to attribute the images to PIC.
PIC also alleged violation of §1202’s prohibition on the provision of false CMI. Farm & City allegedly violated 1202(a) by adding a watermark reading “farmandcitysupply” to some images for use in its eBay storefront. Further, PIC claimed that both defendants removed or altered PIC’s CMI in violation of § 1202(b) before distributing the images.
Nor did PIC submit evidence to support its claim of CMI removal. There was no evidence that either defendant ever received images withCMI; rather, the record indicated the contrary. PIC said that its photographer put PIC attribution with every image he gave to OSI, thus justifying the inference that the defendants removed the CMI. “Given the existence of a third party that has not been deposed and is otherwise absent from the case, it would be too speculative to infer that Orgill removed CMI,” and even more so with Farm & City.
PIC also alleged that Farm & City violated §43(a) by putting the “farmandcitysupply” watermark on the images, constituting false designation of origin and false advertising.
False advertising: the court also joined the consensus that plaintiffs can’t save a Dastar-barred §43(a)(1)(A) merely by repleading the same facts under §43(a)(1)(B). Authorship does not constitute part of the “nature, characteristics, or qualities” of a good for sale.
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References: §1202
 §1202
 § 1202
 §43
 §43
 §43