Source: Reuters

After a US Court of Appeals overturned part of a Court ruling that had ruled in favor of Netflix in a copyright infringement case involving Timothy Sepi, a cameraman who worked on the series “The Tiger King”, a US Court of Appeals said on Monday it would reconsider its ruling against the streaming service. On Monday, a US Court of Appeals said it would reconsider the ruling against the streaming service.

In 2021 plaintiff Timothy Sepi sued Netflix and Royal Goode Productions for copyright infringement of short clips from eight videos he had filmed while the cameraman was working at Gerald Wayne Interactive Zoological Park-a Park owned by Joseph Maldonado-Passage, aka “The Tiger King”.

These videos were used in the Netflix series “Tiger King”: Mayhem and Madness, released in 2020. Sepi claimed that it owned the copyright to the videos and that the defendants had used the clips without permission.

However, in April 2022 the District Court ruled in Netflix’s favor. It held that seven of the clips had been made for hire under the US Copyright Act and that Sepi therefore did not own the copyright.

The Court also found that the defendants’ use of the eighth video was a “fair use” that did not infringe Sepi’s copyright, as it was recorded after the cameraman’s employment with the park had ended.

Subsequently, last March, the Court of Appeal partially reversed the decision, finding that Netflix’s use of the eulogy clip had not been sufficiently “transformative” to be fair, citing a recent US Supreme Court decision on the art of Andy Warhol.

Faced with this decision, Netflix asked the Court to re-examine the case. As a result, the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to hear new arguments on whether the high-profile platform made fair use of Timothy Sepi’s footage.