Del Pizzo Quoted in Law360’s Midyear Copyright Report
July 25, 2023 |Nancy Del Pizzo was interviewed by Law360 for its article, “The Biggest Copyright Decisions Of 2023: A Midyear Report.” The article discusses the most significant copyright decisions year-to-date 2023.
Regarding SAS Institute v. World Programming Ltd., Nancy said the holding has impacted computer cases in the intellectual property arena.
The Federal Circuit switched the burden of proof to the plaintiff after the defendant argued that the non-literal elements weren’t protectable under the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test — a way of identifying similarities between works — Nancy said, noting that the plaintiff here failed to show afterward that the defendants were inaccurate.
“Prior to this, I think that more plaintiffs thought, and maybe they could argue, that the non-literal elements were protectable because they were creative, but this decision said, ‘No, you’re not going to win on that point,'” Nancy said. “If the defendant comes forward and says the applied test … shows that none of these elements are protectable, then the plaintiff can’t just say they were creative and get by with that. You have to actually show that they are protectable.”
