Debra Laws v. Sony Music Entertainment, Inc., D/B/A Epic Records, a Delaware Corporation

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that the Copyright Act preempted a plaintiffs right-of-publicity claim based on the reproduction of a voice recording
• holding that “[t]he mere presence of an additional element (‘commercial use’) in section 3344 is not enough to qualitatively distinguish [a] right of publicity claim from a claim in copyright”
• holding that the plaintiff’s claim satisfied the first prong of Section 301 preemption without discussion of whether a name falls within the “subject matter of copyright”
• holding preempted a right of publicity claim based on the use of Debra Laws’s name and a sample of her song “Very Special” in Jennifer Lopez’s song “All I Have”
• concluding Congress expressly preempted a 27 misappropriation claim through 17 U.S.C. § 301
• warning that “the right of publicity [could be used as] a license to limit the copyright holder’s rights” and that, “left to creative legal arguments, the [] right of 26 publicity could easily supplant the copyright scheme”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).