Advanced Copyright Law on the Internet

the sale of the hat infringed its copyright and trademark rights and the plaintiffs had failed to
satisfy their burden of demonstrating that the defendant knowingly and materially
misrepresented that the plaintiffs’ auction was infringing. The court rejected the plaintiffs’
argument that a higher standard of good faith should be applied just because the defendant’s
agent who issued the takedown notice was a lawyer trained in intellectual property law.^2895

(iv) Novotny v. Chapman

In Novotny v. Chapman,^2896 the defendant made instructional videos in which he
demonstrated a particular method of cutting women’s hair. In 2002, he entered into an
agreement with the plaintiffs in which he would deliver originals of his video to the plaintiffs,
who would then convert them into digital format and publish and sell them on their Web site as
downloadable streaming media clips. In October of 2004, as sales of the videos began to wane,
the defendant sent the plaintiffs an email requesting that they remove his videos from their Web
site. After the plaintiffs refused to do so, the defendant filed notices of copyright infringement
under the DMCA with the plaintiffs’ Internet service providers, alleging that material on the
plaintiffs’ Web site was infringing on the defendant’s copyrights in his videos. Both the Internet
service providers and the Paypal service, which processed payments for the plaintiffs’ Web site,
suspended the plaintiffs’ access to their accounts. In response, the plaintiffs removed the videos
from their Web site. The defendant thereafter filed no further DMCA notices.^2897

The plaintiffs accused the defendant of violating Section 512(f) by filing bad faith
complaints of copyright infringement with the plaintiffs’ Internet service providers and others,
with the intent that such complaints would result in the suspension of the plaintiffs’ Internet
services and accounts, and asked the court to enjoin the defendant from filing any more such
complaints.^2898 The court denied the injunction on the ground that the injury the plaintiffs sought
to avoid – the damage to reputation and business interests caused by the defendant’s filing of
improper DMCA complaints with the plaintiffs’ service providers – was not likely to recur since
the plaintiffs neither were posting the videos at issue on their Web site, nor had they cited any
interest in re-posting the videos before the underlying legal issues were resolved.^2899

(v) BioSafe-One, Inc. v. Hawks

In BioSafe-One, Inc. v. Hawks,^2900 the defendants inadvertently copied some textual
materials from the plaintiffs’ web site into the defendants’ web site. Upon discovering the
copying, the defendants removed the copied materials. After removal of the copied materials,
but before the plaintiffs knew that the copied materials had been removed, the plaintiffs sent two

(^2895) Id. at 1012-13.
(^2896) 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 55471 (W.D.N.C. 2006).
(^2897) Id. at 2-5.
(^2898) Id. at 1.
(^2899) Id. at *7-8.
(^2900) 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88032 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 29, 2007).