Bieber Choreographer Gets Epic Games Copyright Case Revived

A district court that dismissed a celebrity choreographer’s copyright suit against Epic Games Inc. wrongly reduced his choreography to unprotectable poses and failed to consider other expressive elements, the Ninth Circuit said on Wednesday.

Kyle Hanagami’s appeal presented the court with a “novel opportunity” to consider the scope of copyright protections for choreography, a field which “has remained a largely undefined area of law,” the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said. The district court’s approach was “fundamentally at odds with the way we analyze copyright claims for other art forms, like musical compositions,” Judge Richard A. Paez ...