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20 May 2014Copyright

US Supreme Court gives green light to Raging Bull case

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the daughter of a deceased writer can take film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to court for a second time to claim the film Raging Bull infringes her copyright.

The court said yesterday, May 19, that Paula Petrella, daughter of Frank Petrella, could pursue the litigation against MGM.

Petrella’s case, which failed at both district and appeals courts, centres on two screenplays and a book detailing the life of boxer Jake La Motta.

After retiring from boxing, La Motta collaborated with his friend Frank Petrella to produce the works.

It was these, said Paula Petrella, which formed the basis for the 1980 award-winning film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro.

Petrella claimed she renewed the copyright to her father's work after its initial 28-year term expired in 1991.

Despite exchanging a series of letters with MGM since 1998, it was not until 2009 that she filed a lawsuit.

However, the claim was rejected by a lower court judge due to the doctrine of laches, which prohibits delayed lawsuits that have a prejudicial effect on defendants.

That decision was backed by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In October last year, Petrella asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the case, which it agreed to in yesterday’s decision by 6-3.

Andy Baum, partner at Foley & Lardner in New York, said it “on balance” was a bad decision for Hollywood, which “now has no laches defence against suits brought decades after a motion picture or song is first released”.

In the judgment, Justice Ruth Ginsburg wrote that the Copyright Act's bar on lawsuits more than three years after a claim had arisen could not bar the case from being heard because Petrella was alleging “ongoing” infringement.

The case will now return to a lower court, where both arguments will be heard again.

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Copyright
8 April 2015   The daughter of a deceased writer has settled a long-running dispute with film company MGM Studios over the copyright to the film Raging Bull.