Anna Biani v. Showtime Networks, Inc., et al.

Los Angeles, California intellectual property lawyers represented the parties in a copyrights infringement dispute.



The panel held that to state a claim for copyright infringement, a plaintiff must plausibly allege that she owns a valid copyright, and the defendant copied protected aspects of her work. The second prong contains two separate components: factual copying and unlawful appropriation. The copying component requires either direct evidence of copying or a showing that the defendant had access to the plaintiff's work and that the two works share similarities probative of copying. Unlawful appropriation requires proof that the defendant copied enough of the plaintiff's protected expression of ideas or concepts to render the two works substantially similar. In reviewing the district court's ruling on a motion to ismiss, the court considers the extrinsic test for unlawful appropriation, which assesses the objective similarities of

the two works, focusing only on the protectable elements of the plaintiff's expression.

Dismissed.



Affirmed