SAN FRANCISCO (CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — Google may have won the latest court battle, but the legal war over copyrighted material appearing in videos on Google's YouTube video sharing website is far from over.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a federal judge has come down in favor of Google in regards to some parts of a class action lawsuit that had been filed against them by a group that included music publishers.
U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ruled that plaintiffs in the case could not seek damages as the videos were were not registered with U.S. Copyrights, stating that U.S. law "bars statutory damages for all foreign and domestic works not timely registered." He further said that the plaintiffs were not eligible to seek punitive damages but he did leave the door open to seek damages for YouTube videos showing copyrighted live broadcasts, the WSJ said.
The ruling did not address the core of the case and only tangentially touched on Viacom's massive 2007 lawsuit against the YouTube's parent company, Google.
A YouTube spokesman told the WSJ that "the punitive and statutory damages claims dismissed by the court were baseless from the start." – CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
