Bit Parts

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California decided that an independent film producer was bound to arbitrate disputes between it and SAG-AFTRA under the guild's Independent Producers' Limited Exhibition Letter Agreement. Screen Actors Guild ' American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) v. Goldade Productions Inc., 2:14-cv-04843. The letter agreement stated: “It is agreed that this letter is part of the [SAG Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA)], and by executing this letter, the undersigned Producer and Screen Actors Guild ' shall be deemed to have executed” the CBA. SAG-AFTRA won an arbitration award against Goldade for failure to pay monies owed from distribution of Goldade's movie Sex and the Teenage Mind beyond the territory cited in the letter agreement. Confirming the award, District Judge Otis D. Wright II noted: “While this Letter Agreement does not include its own arbitration clause, section 3 of the Agreement provides that 'all the terms of [the CBA] apply as described above [in the Letter Agreement] except as hereby modified.' This means that the Limited Exhibition Letter Agreement operated as a modification of the CBA's terms ' or, in other words, the parties incorporated the Letter Agreement into the CBA. Since Goldade agreed to arbitrate disputes involving interpretation of the CBA, it follows that it agreed to arbitrate disputes concerning the incorporated Letter Agreement.”

DVD Cover Photo Included In News Reporting Was Fair Use

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled that the posting of a photograph that was on a DVD cover, to accompany a website article about a lawsuit involving the video, was a copyright fair use. Leveyfilm Inc. v. Fox Sports Interactive Media LLC, 13 C 4664. In the 1980s, Jay Levey photographed a group of Chicago Bears football players for the cover of an album on which they performed the rap song “Super Bowl Shuffle.” The photo was also used on the cover of a 20th anniversary DVD edition of a video of the football players rapping the song. After an owner of the video sued alleging unauthorized use by another party, Danielle Wysocki wrote an article about the case that she published on her website www.thejerseychaser.com. She downloaded a copy of the Levey DVD cover photo to post alongside her article. Wysokci's website is linked through an affiliate agreement to Fox Sport's www.yardbarker.com. When Levey sued Fox Sports for copyright infringement, the Fox Sports defendants raised a fair use defense. Dismissing the suit, District Judge Thomas M. Durkin found: “With regard to the purpose and character of the use at issue here, ' Wysocki sought to write specifically about the Super Bowl Shuffle lawsuit which concerned illegal use of the video contained on the DVD. To a dispositive degree, the photo ' due to its attachment to the DVD cover of the video at the center of the lawsuit ' had become the news story itself.”

Stan Soocher'is Editor-in-Chief of'Entertainment Law & Finance'and a tenured Associate Professor of Music & Entertainment Industry Studies at the University of Colorado's Denver Campus. He can be reached at'[email protected]'or via'www.stansoocher.com.