Amazon booked for Streaming films illegally

A New York federal judge has recently ruled that Amazon is soon to face a lawsuit where it is alleged of offering several films including “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” for streaming illegally on its platform. The lawsuit is filed by a German businessman named Ralf Hartmann. He put accusations on Amazon of making four films available on the Prime Video platform without obtaining any license.  Hartmann claims, “I was assigned the copyright for the films in 2008 from Capella International, one of the production companies behind the movies, which also include ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’, ‘Commander Hamilton’, and ‘After the Rain’.”

However, Amazon was seen denying allegations, partly on the basis that Hartmann was unable to prove himself as the owner of the copyright registrations for the films. Hartmann’s complaint doesn’t directly cite registrations with the US Copyright Office in any manner but included a series of contracts depicting the mere transfer of the rights for the films to his ownership.

The lawsuit was filed before the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. However, the court has allowed part of the complaint to proceed further. The matter was heard by District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who wrote: “Although the attached exhibits do not dispositive proves that Hartmann owns the copyrights to the films, there was no requirement that the complaint does so to survive a motion to dismiss. It is enough that the complaint alleges ‘that plaintiff owns the copyrights in those work’ and ‘that the copyrights have been registered in accordance with the statute’.”

Although Hartmann’s claim of direct copyright infringement is allowed to proceed further the court threw out the other three counts which were:

1. foreign contributory infringement,

2. vicarious infringement, and

3. foreign infringement.

All those three claims were related to the matter of distribution of the films in foreign markets that too by subsidiary Amazon Digital.

The judge ruled in the case of Amazon Digital that Hartmann’s claims were not sufficient to establish how Amazon controlled the company. “The complaint does not allege how Amazon controlled the subsidiary entity ‘Amazon Digital’ or the means by which Amazon derived profit from it. It relies solely on the fact of Amazon Digital’s subsidiary status,” Engelmayer wrote. Hope every OTT platform will not forget to take proper permission through licensing and contracts to avoid legal complications in the future.