Lynk Media, LLC v. Peacock TV LLC

Background

Lynk Media, LLC alleged that it owned the rights to two videos. The first showed a press conference about voter fraud given by Rudy Giuliani at Four Seasons Total Landscaping Company in Philadelphia on November 7, 2020. The second showed confrontations between supporters of Joe Biden and supporters of Donald Trump.

According to the amended complaint, the videographers assigned rights in the videos to Freedomnews.tv, which registered both videos with the United States Copyright Office. Freedomnews.tv later assigned all of its rights, title, and interest in the videos to Lynk on June 6, 2023.

Peacock and NBC made a documentary about the Giuliani press conference and its effects on Four Seasons Total Landscaping Company. The documentary used segments of Lynk’s videos and aired on Peacock on November 7, 2021. NBC also aired a program that incorporated parts of the Peacock documentary and discussed its production.

Motion to Dismiss

The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim. On such a motion, the court generally accepts the complaint’s factual allegations as true and decides whether those allegations plausibly show that the plaintiff may be entitled to relief. The court does not decide the weight of evidence that might be presented at trial.

The defendants argued that their use of the video clips was fair use. Fair use is a complete defense to copyright infringement. The Copyright Act identifies four factors: the purpose and character of the use; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and importance of the portion used; and the effect on the potential market for the copyrighted work.

Fair-Use Analysis

The court explained that fair use is a fact-intensive question that is rarely resolved on a motion to dismiss. The defendants therefore had to clearly establish from the complaint and materials properly considered at this stage that their use was fair.

For the first factor, the court found that the defendants had not shown that their use was transformative—that is, that it added something new rather than merely repackaging the original videos. The documentary used the videos as illustrative aids for events and people discussed in the documentary, rather than providing commentary about the videos themselves. The defendants could have used footage taken by others at the press conference. The court also noted that the defendants used the videos in commercial programs. The first factor did not weigh in the defendants’ favor, although the court stated that factual questions remained about the purpose of the use and video-copying practices in the news industry.

For the second factor, the court found that the videos had some creative elements because the videographers made artistic choices about camera angle, exposure settings, and video length. At the same time, the videos depicted reality and had been made publicly available before the challenged use. The court concluded that this factor favored neither side.

For the third factor, the defendants argued that they used only one minute of the two videos’ combined 11-minute length in a 29-minute documentary. The court nevertheless found that the defendants copied the heart of the videos—the press-conference scenes and the scenes of clashes between Biden and Trump supporters. Because the defendants had not provided an apparent justification for using Lynk’s footage instead of other footage, this factor favored Lynk.

For the fourth factor, the court recognized that the documentary would not be a satisfactory substitute for the videos themselves. But the analysis also included potential licensing markets. The court concluded that widespread, uncompensated use could undermine Lynk’s ability to obtain payment for licensing the videos. The defendants had not met their burden of showing that their use would not harm Lynk in that licensing market.

Disposition

The court held that the defendants had failed to clearly establish that the amended complaint itself showed that they were entitled to a fair-use defense. It therefore found it inappropriate to grant the Rule 12(b)(6) motion. Judge John G. Koeltl denied the motion to dismiss the amended complaint and stated that the defendants could reassert their fair-use defense at the summary-judgment stage, when the factual record was more developed. The clerk was directed to close the motion docket entry, ECF No. 21.