Photo of Jessica R. Corpuz

Jessica Corpuz is a shareholder at Weintraub Tobin. She represents clients in all aspects of litigation, including in particular the handling of complex business and commercial disputes. Jessica has successfully represented clients in trial, mediation, arbitration, and appeal. She has litigated cases in fields related to licensing and distribution agreements, private equity acquisitions and corporate transactions, international law, breach of contract, fraud, and complex judgment collection, among others.

In December 2019, Scott Hervey wrote about the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Taylor Swift by the writers of the song “Playas Gon’ Play.”  The song was released by the girl group 3LW in 2001 and included the lyrics “Playa, they gonna play / And haters, they gonna hate.”  In 2014, Taylor Swift released “Shake It Off,” which included the lyrics “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”
Continue Reading Taylor Swift Keeps Fighting the ‘Players’ and the ‘Haters’

We recently wrote about a case in the Southern District of New York against Mashable relating to the embedding of content from social media platforms like Instagram.  In that case, the court held that Instagram’s terms of use (which were accepted by the plaintiff, a photographer, when he created an Instagram account) were insufficiently clear to allow Mashable to escape liability for publishing Instagram content through the process of embedding.  Thereafter, the parties settled out of court.  Legal watchers speculated that the ruling would encourage copyright infringement claims based on the embedding of content.
Continue Reading Instagram Faces Claims That It Encouraged Media Companies to Illegally Embed Images Posted to Instagram by Users

Pfizer and BioNTech recently asked the Southern District of California to dismiss a patent infringement claim from Allele Biotechnology related to Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine.

Allele holds a patent for a fluorescent protein called mNeonGreen, which causes some cells to glow when exposed to certain kinds of light.  Allele does not claim that mNeonGreen

A recent case in the Southern District of New York calls into serious question the ubiquitous practice of embedding photographs on a content creator’s website.

An embedded photo is one that is not hosted on the website’s own server, but instead is linked to a third-party server like a social media site.  Instead of the photo being permanently available on the website, the website pulls the photo from the third-party site live when the website is accessed by a user.  Platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok make it extremely easy for websites to embed user posts, and provide website designers with tools specifically meant to make embedding seamless for the user.

In a recent case (Sinclair v. Ziff Davis, LLC, 1:18-cv-00790, S.D.N.Y.), a professional photographer posted a photo to Instagram that was later embedded by Mashable in an article on its website.  In its original ruling, the court held that Instagram’s terms of service (which every user, including Sinclair, accepts when signing up) permitted the embedding on links on third party websites.  The court ruled that Instagram had the right to relicense Sinclair’s image to Mashable, and granted Mashable a dismissal of Sinclair’s claims.
Continue Reading Recent Case Demonstrates the Need for Caution When Embedding Links to Social Media Posts

Nearly unnoticed in the wrangling over the amount of COVID relief payments, the stimulus bill signed into law on December 27, 2020 also included several interesting intellectual property provisions.  Buried thousands of pages into the bill, the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019 (the “CASE Act”) establishes a small claims court-type system under the U.S. Copyright Office for copyright holders to pursue low-value claims of copyright violations.

As it stands now, copyright infringement litigation is time-consuming and expensive, especially for small copyright holders.  Copyright infringement is rife on social media, leaving content creators with few options short of hiring a lawyer, sending cease-and-desist letters, and filing lawsuits.  The attorney’s fees for such litigation can easily exceed the recovery for copyright infringement, leaving the content creator at a serious disadvantage.
Continue Reading COVID-19 Stimulus Bill also Includes Little-known Provision Creating New Streamlined Tribunal for Copyright Infringement Claims