Moonbug Entm't Ltd. v. Babybus (Fujian) Network Tech. Co., Ltd
| Docket Number | 21-cv-06536-EMC |
| Decision Date | 20 July 2023 |
| Parties | MOONBUG ENTERTAINMENT LIMITED, et al., Plaintiffs, v. BABYBUS (FUJIAN) NETWORK TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of California |
FINAL JURY INSTRUCTIONS
The following constitute the Court's proposed Final Jury Instructions in advance of the charging conference on July 21, 2023.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
When a party has the burden of proving any claim or affirmative defense by a preponderance of the evidence, it means you must be persuaded by the evidence that the claim or affirmative defense is more probably true than not true.
You should base your decision on all the evidence, regardless of which party presented it.
The evidence you are to consider in deciding what the facts are consists of:
In reaching your verdict, you may consider only the testimony and exhibits received into evidence. Certain things are not evidence, and you may not consider them in deciding what the facts are. I will list them for you:
Evidence may be direct or circumstantial. Direct evidence is direct proof of a fact, such as testimony by a witness about what that witness personally saw or heard or did. Circumstantial evidence is proof of one or more facts from which you could find another fact. You should consider both kinds of evidence. The law makes no distinction between the weight to be given to either direct or circumstantial evidence. It is for you to decide how much weight to give to any evidence.
By way of example, if you wake up in the morning and see that the sidewalk is wet, you may find from that fact that it rained during the night. However, other evidence, such as a turned on garden hose, may provide a different explanation for the presence of water on the sidewalk. Therefore, before you decide that a fact has been proved by circumstantial evidence, you must consider all the evidence in the light of reason, experience and common sense.
In deciding the facts in this case, you may have to decide which testimony to believe and which testimony not to believe. You may believe everything a witness says, or part of it, or none of it.
In considering the testimony of any witness, you may take into account:
Sometimes a witness may say something that is not consistent with something else he or she said. Sometimes different witnesses will give different versions of what happened. People often forget things or make mistakes in what they remember. Also two people may see the same event but remember it differently. You may consider these differences, but do not decide that testimony is untrue just because it differs from other testimony.
However if you decide that a witness has deliberately testified untruthfully about something important, you may choose not to believe anything that witness said. On the other hand, if you think the witness testified untruthfully about some things but told the truth about others, you may accept the part you think is true and ignore the rest.
The weight of the evidence as to a fact does not necessarily depend on the number of witnesses who testify. What is important is how believable the witnesses were, and how much weight you think their testimony deserves.
Your evaluation of witness testimony should not be influenced by any prejudice or bias, including unconscious bias.
COPYRIGHT - DEFINED (17 U.S.C. § 106)
Copyright is the exclusive right to copy. This right to copy includes the exclusive rights to or authorize others to:
1. reproduce the copyrighted works;
2. recast, transform, or adapt the work, that is prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted works, and to perform publicly derivative works based upon the copyrighted audiovisual works;
3. distribute copies of the copyrighted works to the public;
4. publicly perform copyrighted audiovisual works;
5. display publicly a copyrighted audiovisual or graphic work; and
6. perform a sound recording.
It is the owner of a copyright who may exercise these exclusive rights. The term “owner” includes the author of the work and the exclusive licensee of the work. In general, copyright law protects against reproduction, adaptation, public distribution, public performance, public display of identical or substantially similar copies of the owner's copyrighted work without the owner's permission. An owner may enforce these rights to exclude others in an action for copyright infringement.
[Court Notes: 9th Cir. Model Civil Jury Instruction No. 17.2.
This instruction is necessary because it defines copyright, including the exclusive rights granted as part of each copyright, which is necessary for the jury in evaluating whether Babybus infringed these rights.]
COPYRIGHT - ELEMENTS - OWNERSHIP AND COPYING (17 U.S.C. § 501(a)-(b))
On the copyright infringement claim as to each disputed work, Plaintiffs first have the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that:
You are instructed that the Court has already determined that Plaintiffs own valid copyrights in the 42 CoComelon Works at issue for element (1) above.
[Court Notes: 9th Cir. Model Civil Jury Instruction No. 17.5; Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin, 952 F.3d 1051, 1064 (9th Cir. 2020).
Babybus argues that the instructions should include the sentence “This element contains two separate components: ‘factual copying' and ‘unlawful appropriation.'” Moonbug argues that this sentence is not necessary because argumentative and duplicative of other instructions. The Court includes this instruction because it is a more precise statement of the law, as this Court has previously explained in its SJ order. Docket No. 242 (SJ Order) at 8 ( ). As to the “42 CoComelon works” or “35 asserted copyrights,” the Court uses the former because it intends to decline bifurcation of the trial as described above.]
COPYRIGHT - SUBJECT MATTER - GENERALLY (17 U.S.C. § 102)
Plaintiffs are the owners of valid copyrights in 42 CoComelon Works at issue in this case. The CoComelon Works involved in this trial are known as:
Copyright protection in...
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