Copyright case: Baiul v. NBC Sports, USA

A lawsuit brought by figure skater Oksana Baiul accusing NBC Sports of failing to pay her royalties owed for a video production of her ice skating performance in "Nutcracker on Ice" was barred by res judicata, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has held. A decision of the federal district court in Los Angeles, dismissing Baiul’s lawsuit, was affirmed. There was an identity of the claims, the parties, and a final judgment on the merits against Baiul in an earlier suit filed in New York court, in which Baiul, as in this suit, asserted state law claims against NBC for failure to pay royalties in connection with audiovisual works featuring her skating performances (Baiul v. NBC Sports, April 27, 2018, per curiam).

Case date: 27 April 2018

Case number: No. 16-56658

Court: United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.