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.