Cameo Clips

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin decided that co-owners of a copyright can grant exclusive rights in their work to third parties on their own. Thus, a music video company that obtained copyright assignments from two of the three co-creators of the music video “What What (In the Butt)” (WWITB) had the right to file suit over an episode of the TV series South Park that recreated a portion of WWITB to parody the viral-video craze. Brownmark Films LLC v. Comedy Partners, 10-CV-101. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller noted that “no one can credibly argue that the risk of limiting the other co-owner's rights [to independently exploit the work] can be used to artificially restrict the alienability of the co-owner's right to transfer their interest in the copyright.” The district court's decision takes issue with opposing precedent from the Ninth Circuit.

Emphasizing that “context is king,” Judge Stadtmueller determined he could rule on the defendants' fair use defense on a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ' especially because the “complaint discusses a very limited context for the alleged infringement. ' In other words, the complaint does not allege that the defendants are somehow using the WWITB video in any other form other than in the production and distribution of the [South Park] episode 'Canada On Strike.'”