Photo Credit: Dima Solomin
Eight months later, a federal judge has dismissed Wixen’s copyright and defamation lawsuit against Meta for failing “to adequately allege standing under the Copyright Act.” But with an amended complaint now on the way, the ugly legal battle is far from over.
Judge John F. Walter just recently granted the Facebook and Instagram parent’s dismissal motion, which, we previously reported, arrived in June. Therein, Meta took aim at the multifaceted complaint on several levels – including by emphasizing Wixen’s alleged failure to demonstrate that it owned or possessed exclusive licensing rights to the relevant works.
(Without retreading too much ground here, “relevant works” refer to the nearly 700 compositions that Meta allegedly infringed across its platforms after Wixen licensing-renewal talks fell through. And as noted, the WhatsApp owner is also accused of misrepresenting the circumstances surrounding the Wixen split, thereby allegedly causing multiple clients to cut ties with the publisher.)
“Although Meta raised standing as a threshold issue with Wixen’s original complaint,” the defendant wrote, “Wixen chose to double down: even as it now asserts infringement as to 681 Works, it still does not identify any Work it owns, any exclusive right it purportedly holds, or any agreement conferring such rights.”
Evidently, this argument resonated with the court, which reiterated in its dismissal order that “under Ninth Circuit precedent, a copyright co-owner cannot unilaterally grant a third party an exclusive license in a co-owned copyright interest that limits the independent rights of other co-owners.
“Indeed, absent the other co-owners’ consent, the licensee holds only a non-exclusive license and thus lacks standing to sue for infringement on the basis of that license,” Judge Walter wrote.
As such – and with the plaintiff publisher having separately conceded “that it does not, in fact, have standing to sue for approximately 100 Works” at hand – Wixen “failed to adequately allege that it has standing to sue under the Copyright Act with respect to any of the Works,” according to the judge.
“Wixen, however, fails to specify for any particular Work, whether it is an owner or an exclusive licensee, what exclusive rights it holds, or from whom those rights derive,” Judge Walter continued. “The Court agrees with Meta that Wixen’s general and conclusory allegations are insufficient to establish standing.”
But as mentioned, the development represents a setback as opposed to an insurmountable obstacle for Wixen, which has until September 18th to make the appropriate changes in a second amended suit.
“For each Work at issue, Wixen shall allege whether it owns the Work or exclusively licenses the Work, and what Section 106 rights it holds with respect to that Work,” the judge concluded.
With that, all eyes are on the retooled complaint – especially since the standing-focused dismissal order didn’t dive into the defamation, trade libel, and intentional interference with contractual relations claims centering on Meta’s alleged “lies and misrepresentations.”
Meanwhile, Meta remains embroiled in different infringement suits as well, among them a long-running action spearheaded by Epidemic Sound and a multimillion-dollar complaint from Eminem publisher Eight Mile Style.
