MGM Claim of Strict Copyright Damages Bar Finds 9th Cir. Dubious

MGM Domestic Television Distribution LLC faced scrutiny at oral argument before the Ninth Circuit as it argued the Copyright Act’s three-year time bar applied even if infringement wasn’t discovered in time.

Starz Entertainment LLC sued MGM for infringing copyrights by letting Amazon and other platforms stream hundreds of MGM movies and TV episodes to which Starz bought exclusive rights.

MGM told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that damages for many of the claims were unavailable because infringement happened more than three years before the 2020 suit, outside the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations.

The U.S. District ...