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IP BLAWG
Did I Say That Out Loud?
Beverly A. Berneman
11/8/16If you don’t own the rights to your content, it could go places you don’t want it to go. %CUT% Actor and musician, Jared Leto’s production company, Sisyphus, hired Naeem Munaf to shoot a video of Leto’s band for promotional purposes. The parties didn’t have a written agreement. In the video, Leto made some disparaging remarks about Taylor Swift. Realizing that he had a celebrity dis gold mine, Munaf sold the offending video to TMZ.com for $2,000. Two days after TMZ.com posted the video, Sisyphus had Munaf sign a non-disclosure agreement. Sisyphus’s team then registered the video with the U.S. Copyright Office and sued Munaf for copyright infringement. The court granted summary judgment for Munaf.
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