Pennsylvania-based Kingâs College and head football coach Jeffery Knarr are being sued for copyright infringement. Sports psychologist and author Dr. Keith Bell alleges that both committed offenses when Knarr retweeted a page from his book, that was initially tweeted by someone else, almost two years ago.
When copyright infringement lawsuits hit the US courts, thereâs often a serious case at hand. Whether thatâs the sharing of a leaked movie online or indeed the mass infringement that allegedly took place on Megaupload, thereâs usually something quite meaty to discuss.
A lawsuit filed this week in a Pennsylvania federal court certainly provides the later, but without managing to be much more than a fairly trivial matter in the first instance.
The case was filed by sports psychologist and author Dr. Keith Bell. It begins by describing Bell as an âinternationally recognized performance consultantâ who has worked with 500 teams, including the Olympic and national teams for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Fiji, and the Cayman Islands.
Bell is further described as a successful speaker, athlete and coach; âA four-time collegiate All-American swimmer, a holder of numerous world and national masters swim records, and has coached several collegiate, high school, and private swim teams to competitive success.â
At the heart of the lawsuit is a book that Bell published in 1982, entitled Winning Isnât Normal.
âThe book has enjoyed substantial acclaim, distribution and publicity. Dr. Bell is the sole author of this work, and continues to own all rights in the work,â the lawsuit (pdf) reads.
Bell claims that on or about November 6, 2015, Kingâs College head football coach Jeffery Knarr retweeted a tweet that was initially posted from @NSUBaseball32, a Twitter account operated by Northeastern State Universityâs RiverHawks baseball team. The retweet, as shown in the lawsuit, can be seen below.
âNeither Defendant Kingâs College nor Defendant Jeffery Knarr contacted Dr. Bell to request permission to use Dr. Bellâs copyrighted work. As of November 14, 2015, the post had received 206 âRetweetsâ and 189 âLikes.â Due to the globally accessible nature of Twitter, the post was accessible by Internet users across the world.â
Bell says he sent a cease and desist letter to NSU in September 2016 and shortly thereafter NSU removed the post, which removed the retweets. However, this meant that Knarrâs retweet had been online for âat leastâ 10 months and 21 days.
To put the icing on the cake, Bell also holds the trademark to the phrase âWinning Isnât Normalâ, so heâs suing Knarr and his Kingâs College employer for trademark infringement too.
âThe Defendants included Plaintiffâs trademark twice in the Twitter post. The first instance was as the title of the post, with the mark shown in letters which were emphasized by being capitalized, bold, and underlined,â the lawsuit notes.
âThe second instance was at the end of the post, with the mark shown in letters which were emphasized by being capitalized, bold, underlined, and followed by three exclamation points.â
Describing what appears to be a casual retweet as âwillful, intentional and purposefulâ infringement carried out âin disregard of and with indifference to Plaintiffâs rights,â Bell demands damages and attorneys fees from Knarr and his employer.
âAs a direct and proximate result of said infringement by Defendants, Plaintiff is entitled to damages in an amount to be proven at trial,â the lawsuit concludes.
Since the page from the book retweeted by Knarr is a small portion of the overall work, there may be a fair use defense. Nevertheless, defending this kind of suit is never cheap, so itâs probably fair to say there will already be a considerable amount of regret among the defendants at ever having set eyes on Bellâs 35-year-old book.
Source: Â TorrentFreak.com
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