textbooks, and a false CMI claim based on the fact that the note package had the phrase
“Einstein’s Notes (c)” printed on it.^1318
The court rejected both claims. With respect to the claim for removal of CMI, the court
noted that Class Notes did not “remove” any CMI contained in the textbooks or on the film study
questions. Its student note takers simply took notes from the professor’s course and those notes
were compiled into note packages. An action for removal of CMI requires the information to be
removed from a plaintiff’s product or work. Here, nothing was removed from the copyrighted
works. Instead, information from the professor’s courses was allegedly copied into a different
form and then incorporated into the note packages. Hence, no CMI was removed from the
plaintiff’s product or work. With respect to the claim for false CMI, the court noted that the note
packages were a different product from the professor’s work even if they included materials from
the professor’s work. No alteration was made to the professor’s product or work, so there was
no violation of the DMCA by printing “Einstein’s Notes (c)” on the note packages. Finally, even
if there was illegal alteration of CMI, the court noted that the plaintiff had presented no evidence
to show that Class Notes took any such action with intent to aid infringement. Accordingly, the
court granted Class Notes summary judgment with respect to the CMI claims.^1319
e. Agence France Presse v. MorelIn Agence France Presse v. Morel,^1320 photographer Daniel Morel took photos of Port au
Prince, Haiti, shortly after an earthquake devastated the city and posted the photos on TwitPic.
There were no copyright notices on the images themselves, but Morel’s TwitPic page included
the attributions “Morel” and “by photomorel” next to the images. A few minutes after Morel
posted his photos, Lisandro Suero copied the photos, posted them on his TwitPic page, and
tweeted that he had “exclusive photographs of the catastrophe for credit and copyright.” Suero
did not attribute the photos to Morel. Agence France Presse (AFP) downloaded 13 of Morel’s
photos from Suero’s TwitPic page (not knowing that Suero had copied them from Morel), placed
them on an image forum and transmitted them to Getty, an image licensing company. Morel’s
photos were labeled with the credit line “AFP/Getty/Lisandro Suero,” designating AFP and
Getty as the licensing agents and Suero as photographer. Getty then licensed Morel’s photos to
numerous third party news agencies, including CBS and CNN. After learning that the photos did
not belong to Suero, AFP issued a wire instruction to change the photographer credit from Suero
to Morel. However, Getty continued to sell licenses to charities, relief organizations, and new
outlets that variously credited AFP, Suero, or Morel as the photographer.^1321
Shortly thereafter, Corbis, which acted as Morel’s worldwide licensing agent emailed
Getty asserting exclusive rights to Morel’s photos. That afternoon, AFP issued a “kill” for 8
images listing Morel as photographer, but the “kill” did not include identical images credited to
Suero or images never credited to Morel. Morel and Corbis alleged that AFP and Getty failed to
(^1318) Id. at 2-4, 14-15.
(^1319) Id. at 14-16.
(^1320) 769 F. Supp. 2d 295 (S.D.N.Y. 2011).
(^1321) Id. at 298-300.