Friday, November 13, 2015

Motion to dismiss in the monkey selfie lawsuit

Slate's Jordan Weismann has it here.  He says "the gist of the motion ... is pretty simple: Under 9th Circuit precedent, animals ... only have standing to sue when Congress explicitly says they do. Copyright laws don't mention any right of action for monkeys. Therefore, this case is for the birds."  Prawfblawg's Howard Wasserman says "the motion argues both lack of standing and failure to state a claim, both based on the argument that copyright protections do not extend to non-human animals. As I argued in [a] prior post, I believe that under Lexmark the proper basis for dismissing is failure to state a claim."  More from the Washington Post here.  Background here.