Copyright Law

Final witness of June 16th in Capitol v. Thomas-Rasset

By Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman

The final witness called by Plaintiffs this afternoon was Betsy Brown, contract administrator for Warner Bros. Records.

Her testimony was mostly procedural, being asked about copyright certificates, if the works produced were works for hire, whether or not any of the works alleged were owned by Warner Bros records, and whether or not the CDs were those alleged infringed. She was asked to point out some copyright notices on CD jewel cases and listen to both an MP3 version MediaSentry acquired and a retail version of one of Warner's songs at issue in this case.

During her testimony the three Warner certified copyright registration certificates and CDs were moved into evidence.

The final direct question was whether or not Warner authorized Jammie Thomas-Rasset to distribute their works, to which she testified that they did not.

The cross examination was very brief, just asking approximately how many records each of these three infriged works sold. She testified that she believed all three had gone platinum, which is more than one million sales.

The only housekeeping question presented to the court at the conclusion of the day was a defense question if they should start talking about end of trial preparations such as jury instruction since the defense believes they may complete testimony tomorrow. The Plaintiffs have three witnesses remaining (which includes the recall of Wade Leak), and the defense estimates their case will take less than half a day. The judge indicates that he has to be on a plane by mid-afternoon (I assume tomorrow, but it was not explicitly stated) and asked the parties if they would be ready to close on Friday (I assume this means no proceedings on Thursday, but again this was not explicitly stated). The parties indicated that they would be, and each side indicated they would need about a half hour for closing.

The case will resume tomorrow morning without the jury at 8am for any discussion of proposed jury instruction or other necessary matters and the trial will resume at 9am.

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Full post as published by Recording Industry vs The People on June 16, 2009 (boomark / email).