After a three year legal battle involving highly technical discovery, on July 12, 2022, Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP lawyers secured a complete victory on summary judgment for clients Museum of Dream Space LLC and Dahooo American as defendants in a groundbreaking copyright action in the United States District Court in Los Angeles, California.
Plaintiff teamLab Inc., a Japanese digital art collective, alleged that Carter Ledyard’s clients infringed teamLab’s unregistered foreign copyrights in interactive digital exhibitions and photographs in connection with the operation and marketing of defendants’ art museum located in Beverly Hills, California. After completing discovery that involved the exchange of large volumes of foreign language documents, and depositions of witnesses located in China, Japan, and the U.S., Carter Ledyard’s arguments on summary judgment demonstrated several critical substantial and procedural deficiencies in Plaintiff teamLab’s claims, including the argument adopted by the Court: teamLab failed to provide sufficient evidence of whether, when, or where its allegedly infringed works were first published and, thus, failed to carry its burden of proof that it is exempt from the Copyright Act’s pre-suit registration requirement. The court granted summary judgment in favor of the Museum of Dream Space LLC and Dahooo American and dismissed all claims against them.
The defendants’ legal team was composed of partner and Chair of Carter Ledyard’s China Practice Group Pang Zhang-Whitaker, and the litigation team was led by partner and Chair of Carter Ledyard’s Intellectual Property Department, Jack Griem, and associates Nicholas Tapert, Sarah Ganley, and Nilima Singh, with support from California counsel partner Lawrence Hadley and Thomas Burke of Glaser Weil Fink Howard Avchen & Shapiro LLP.