Parisienne v. Scripps Media, Inc.
- Edgardo Ramos
- 1:19-cv-08612
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 10
In Parisienne v. Scripps Media, Judge Ramos denied Scripps’s motion to dismiss the copyright case as untimely.
Theodore Parisienne’s copyright-infringement case against Scripps Media, Inc. was allowed to proceed past the statute-of-limitations challenge; the opinion did not determine liability.
What happened
In Parisienne v. Scripps Media, Inc., photographer Theodore Parisienne alleged that Scripps used two of his photographs without permission in a 2016 online article. Scripps argued that the claim was filed too late under the Copyright Act’s three-year deadline.
Parisienne alleged that he discovered the unauthorized use on September 4, 2018, and filed the case on September 16, 2019. Scripps argued that Parisienne should have discovered the use earlier because the article was publicly available, credited him by name, and he had hired a law firm that searched for online infringements.
Judge Edgardo Ramos denied Scripps’s motion to dismiss. He held that the complaint did not clearly show that the claim was untimely, and he did not decide whether Scripps actually infringed Parisienne’s copyrights.
The detailed version
- Parisienne v. Scripps Media, Inc. · No. 1:19-cv-08612
- Edgardo Ramos
- Aug. 17, 2021
Background
Theodore Parisienne, a professional photographer, sued Scripps Media, Inc. for copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. §§ 106 and 501. The dispute concerned two photographs Parisienne took of a person on the wires of the Brooklyn Bridge. Parisienne alleged that he licensed the photographs to the New York Daily News, which published them on November 17, 2014. He also alleged that Scripps published the photographs without a license or permission in a March 15, 2016 article on cracked.com.
Parisienne alleged that he retained the Liebowitz Law Firm on or about September 21, 2016, and that the firm found Scripps’s alleged infringement on September 4, 2018. He registered the photographs with the Copyright Office on September 11, 2018, and filed this action on September 16, 2019.
Motion to Dismiss
Scripps moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal for failure to state a legally sufficient claim. Scripps argued that the claim was barred by the Copyright Act’s three-year statute of limitations, which requires a civil copyright action to be filed within three years after the claim accrued.
The Court explained that the Second Circuit applies the copyright discovery rule. Under that rule, a claim generally accrues when the copyright owner actually discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, the alleged infringement. A copyright owner does not have a general duty to constantly search the internet for unauthorized uses. At the pleading stage, dismissal based on a statute of limitations is proper only when the complaint and materials the Court may consider clearly establish that the claim is legally untimely.
Scripps argued that Parisienne should have discovered the infringement when the article was posted in March 2016 because the article credited him by name and was publicly available and searchable. Scripps also argued that Parisienne’s experience in bringing copyright cases and his retention of the Liebowitz Law Firm should have led to earlier discovery.
The Court rejected those arguments for purposes of the motion. Scripps did not identify an inquiry notice or “storm warning”—information that should have prompted a reasonably diligent investigation—between the article’s publication and Parisienne’s retention of counsel. The Court also noted that even if Parisienne should have discovered the infringement when he retained counsel in September 2016, or when he filed an earlier copyright action in October 2016, the September 16, 2019 filing would still have been within three years of those dates.
Ruling
The Court found that it was not clear from the complaint that Parisienne’s claim was barred by the statute of limitations. It therefore held that the copyright claim could not be dismissed as untimely at that stage and DENIED Scripps Media, Inc.’s motion to dismiss. The opinion did not decide whether Scripps infringed Parisienne’s copyrights or otherwise resolve the merits of the infringement claim. The parties were directed to appear for an initial conference.
Read the full 10-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.