You can't copyright a musical tone, but you can copyright a musical composition -- or even a particular set of a dozen or so musical tones put together in a particular way.
Similarly, you can't copyright a particular human pose -- e.g., hands on your hips -- but you can copyright a particular set of human poses choreographed together in a particular way.
So holds the Ninth Circuit, which reversed the district court's dismissal of a complaint alleging that the makers of Fortnite had illegally copied one of his copyrighted dance moves for an "emote" available in the game.
You can read Judge Paez's 28-page, single-spaced opinion if you'd like. It's well-crafted and smart.
Or, if you have less time, just look at the following YouTube video, a link to which is contained in one of the footnotes of the opinion and which was created by counsel for the plaintiff. The video compares the Fortnite emote at issue to portions of the copyrighted dance moves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXYDr9o_FJY
Pretty darn similar, eh?
The old saying is that a picture is sometimes worth a thousand words. To me, the video here is worth the 7341 words in Judge Paez's opinion.
Maybe even more.
