In a case stemming from a copyright dispute over photographs of
the legendary hip hop group Run-DMC, the US Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court's grant of summary
judgment in favor of a music merchandising company on claims that
the merchandising company willfully infringed the
photographer's copyrights and knowingly removed copyright
management information (CMI) from the images it used. The Court
also affirmed the district court's ruling on the limitation of
plaintiff's statutory damages. Glen E. Friedman v. Live
Nation Merchandise Inc., Case No. 14-55302 (9th Cir., Aug. 19,
2016) (Berzon, J).
Glen Friedman is a well-known music and subculture photographer
who took a series of photographs of Run-DMC in the 1980s. After he
discovered that several of his Run-DMC images were being used
without his permission by Live Nation Merchandising in a 2008 wall
calendar and for three different t-shirt designs, Friedman filed a
complaint for copyright
