To determine whether a defendant's work is substantially similar to a plaintiff's work in a copyright infringement case, courts generally first discard any unprotectable elements from the plaintiff's work.
<b>Decision of Note</b> Film Owner Can't Claim Copyright Protection for Actor's Multiple Roles
To determine whether a defendant's work is substantially similar to a plaintiff's work in a copyright infringement case, courts generally first discard any unprotectable elements from the plaintiff's work. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently ruled that the use of one actor to play multiple roles in the plaintiff's 1949 comedy film <i>Kind Hearts and Coronets</i> wasn't a protectable element for proving infringement by the authors of a stage musical adapted from the film.
By
Stan Soocher
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