Case History
The United States District Court for the Central District of California, Gary L. Taylor, J., 77 F.Supp. 2d 1116, granted summary judgment for search engine operator based on finding of fair use and owner appealed.
In 2002, the Ninth Circuit United States Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California affirmed the District Court's holding that thumbnails were prima facia infringing Kelly's copyright, but that the fair use doctrine permitted the use of the thumbnails in the image index. It upheld the right of image search engines to display thumbnail copies of images within their search results. However, the Circuit Court overturned a portion of the lower court summary judgment ruling in favor of the defendant, holding that fair use did not permit the inline linking or framing processes that displayed Kelly's images in the context of Arriba's web site.
On July 7, 2003, the Ninth Circuit modified its initial decision. The Court let stand the ruling about thumbnails and fair use but withdrew its decision on inline links and remanded the case to the District Court for trial, holding that the District Court had made a decision it shouldn't have made at that stage of the proceedings. On denial of rehearing and withdrawing and superseding its prior opinion, 280 F.3d 934, the Court of Appeals, T. G. Nelson, Circuit Judge, held that operator's use of owner's images as "thumbnails" in its search engine was fair use. 280 F.3d 934 (CA9 2002)
Kelly has posted online that after failure to reach a settlement, default judgment in his favor was obtained on the remaining issues on March 18, 2004. However, at that point the owner of the Arriba search engine (Sorceron Inc.) had gone out of business and there was no one for Kelly to settle with. With no one left to defend the case, Kelly managed to get a judgement against Arriba Soft Inc., an entity that no longer existed in any form.
Judgment shall be entered in favor of Plaintiff LESLIE A. KELLY, and individual and d/b/a LES KELLY PUBLICATIONS, LES KELLY ENTERPRISES, and SHOW ME THE GOLD and against Defendant ARRIBA SOFT CORPORATION, aka DITTO.COM in the sum of $345,000.00, plus reasonable attorney's fees in the sum of $6,068.20. s/Gary L. Taylor, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT JUDGE."Read more about this topic: Kelly V. Arriba Soft Corporation
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