Stanford Center for Internet and Society

In May, BT secured a complete victory over Plaintiffs Ralph Vargas and Bland-Ricky Roberts when the court granted his summary judgment motion and dismissed Plaintiffs' case in its entirety.

Most who have followed Professor Carol Shloss's lawsuit against the Estate of James Joyce and its Trustees know she prevailed completely when the Estate agreed to let her publish the materials at issue free from copyright infringement liability. Now the Court has confirmed what we all knew to be true. In an order issued today, the Court held that Shloss is the prevailing party in her lawsuit and is therefore entitled to recover attorneys' fees from the Estate. Read the order here.

The amount of fees to be awarded is still to be determined, but we hope this demonstrates that inadequate respect for fair use's critical role in scholarly inquiry and free expression can have substantial and serious consequences.

After a very long saga, BT has been vindicated in his fight againt New York Musician Ralph Vargas and Vargas's producer, Bland-Ricky Roberts, who together alleged that BT copied a drumbeat from Vargas's album. Today, the Court held Vargas and Roberts presented no credible evidence that BT had done so, granted summary judgment in BT's favor, and dismissed the case in its entirety.

Read the decision here.

This case is about much more than whether one artist copied a particular drumbeat from another. Basic drumbeats and rythm patterns should not be subject to copyright protection at all. If one musician can sue another and impose hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs just because one short drumbeat happens to sound a bit like another, that threatens creative freedom in a profound way. We hope this discourages Vargas and others from pursuing spurious claims like this.