Ninth Circuit to Rule in Monkey Selfie Case Despite Settlement
The court declined to dismiss the case, saying it's "wary of abetting ‘strategic behavior’ on the part of institutional litigants."
Law.com discusses the banannas updates in the “monkey selfie” copyright case:
Seven months after a nature photographer and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals settled the famed monkey selfie copyright case, the appellate court has said not so fast. It will be issuing an opinion after all, and probably shortly.
For reasons including its wariness of “abetting ‘strategic behavior’ on the part of institutional litigants,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the parties’ joint motion last fall to dismiss the case and vacate a lower court order from U.S. District Judge William Orrick III of the Northern District of California.
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Competitive Enterprise Institute, with counsel from Theodore Frank, opposed the parties’ motion to dismiss the case. Even if the Ninth Circuit chose not to rule, it should leave Orrick’s district court order in favor of Slater in place, Frank argued. That would “deter PETA and other groups from using the Copyright Act as an ideological weapon to generate publicity and impose legal costs on innocent copyright holders,” Frank wrote at the time.