Logan v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

Background

Logan alleged that he owns the copyright in 258 landscape photographs. He had published the photographs on Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license that allowed reproduction, public display, and distribution subject to restrictions including attribution. After the court dismissed his earlier complaint but allowed amendment, Logan filed a second amended complaint based largely on Facebook’s “check-in” and “prefetching” features.

Logan alleged that Facebook displayed his photographs in response to users checking in at locations and that prefetching downloaded content to users’ devices before they tapped a link. He claimed that these features caused his photographs to be downloaded to Meta’s servers and to third-party users’ devices or storage locations, sometimes in altered thumbnail form. He asserted direct and secondary copyright-infringement claims, a claim under the Lanham Act, and a claim under section 1202(b) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which addresses intentional removal or alteration of copyright-management information.

Meta moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim. Meta did not challenge Logan’s direct-infringement claims concerning copyrighted photographs specifically identified in the second amended complaint. The opinion states that direct claims concerning unregistered photographs were dismissed under the court’s earlier order.

Secondary Copyright Liability

The court held that secondary copyright liability required Logan first to plausibly allege direct infringement by third parties. It found that the second amended complaint did not plausibly allege that Facebook’s prefetching feature applied to Logan’s photographs. The attached Meta help-center document described prefetching in connection with third-party advertisements, did not indicate that Facebook prefetched content already on Facebook, and stated that images were not cached on users’ devices.

The court also found no plausible factual connection between Facebook’s check-in and prefetching features. Logan’s conclusory allegations did not establish that a user checking in caused a version of one of his photographs to be stored on the user’s device, server, or hard drive. The court therefore dismissed the secondary-liability claims without leave to amend because Logan had already received an opportunity to correct this deficiency.

Lanham Act Claim

Logan alleged that Meta violated the Lanham Act by resizing and reconfiguring his photographs into thumbnails, rather than merely removing attribution. The court held that he alleged no facts showing that Facebook users were likely to be deceived by a photograph cropped or resized into a thumbnail, or that any such deception would be material to purchasing decisions.

The court reasoned that Facebook users understand that photographs are routinely cropped and resized into thumbnails. It also found that Logan did not plausibly allege that users would download, retain, or share a small, lower-quality thumbnail instead of accessing higher-quality versions on Wikimedia Commons. To the extent Logan relied again on a theory that Meta misrepresented his authorship by removing his signature, the court said that theory had already been rejected. The Lanham Act claim was dismissed without leave to amend.

The opinion also states that Logan asserted a claim concerning sales and loss of goodwill, but did not respond to Meta’s argument addressing it. The court treated that claim as abandoned and dismissed it.

DMCA Claim

Logan dropped his claim under DMCA section 1202(a) and reasserted a claim under section 1202(b). He alleged that Meta removed or altered his copyright-management information by cropping a signature from a photograph when creating a thumbnail.

The court held that Logan did not plausibly allege intentional removal or alteration. Facebook uniformly cropped photographs into small thumbnails, and Logan alleged no facts suggesting that his signature was removed intentionally rather than lost as an unintended result of the thumbnail process. The court distinguished a case in which a watermark had been removed while the rest of the image remained intact. Here, the court found that the photograph was uniformly cropped and that any loss of the signature appeared accidental.

The DMCA claim was dismissed, and the court concluded that further leave to amend was not warranted because Logan’s new theories had not cured the deficiencies identified in the earlier order.

Disposition

The court granted Meta’s motion to dismiss. The challenged secondary copyright-liability, Lanham Act, and DMCA claims were dismissed without leave to amend. The opinion also states that direct claims concerning unregistered photographs were dismissed under the earlier order; Meta did not challenge direct claims concerning specifically identified copyrighted photographs in this motion.