Anas has filed his response to CBS's brief. Can be found here
https://www.docdroid.net/RplwYYb/abdin-v-cbs-broadcasting-inc-02cae-19-03160-00790.pdf
Case is on the calendar for week of 5/11.
Okay, I went and read this.
First things first. Back when I first took interest in this and decided to read the motion to dismiss by CBS I was really intimidated to read 30 pages of legalese. But to my surprise, I had hardly a problem reading it, because it was very well constructed and written. They made a point to present the argument the plaintiff was making, and then went point by point through their arguments against it. If they cited precedence from another case they made sure to explain enough about it that you could easily understand their point.
This thing I just read? It's
gibberish in places. There's passages I had to read several times to try and make sense of them. They're citing cases and I have no idea what that case was about or how the passage they cited relates to ... anything, really. Like:
Defendant’s 13-second clip argument has been addressed herein. Plaintiff’s work appears on the Steam gaming site from 2015 and consists of a series of work containing the Tardigrade. (A-70, A-71-94). Real world facts are clearly protected.Mattel, Inc. v. Azrak-Hamway Int'l, Inc., 724 F.2d 357 (2d Cir. 1983). The rendering of such an idea is not in itself protectable; only the particularized expression of that idea, for example, the particular form created by the decision to accentuate certain muscle groups relative to others can be protected. See, e.g., Ideal Toy Corp. v. Fab-Lu Ltd., 360 F.2d 1021 (2d Cir. 1966).
What?
The entire document is riddled with notions of "facts", like, there's "questions of facts", "issues of fact", "the existence of facts within the plaintiff's work" and I have no clue what that even means. The "refutation", if you want to call it that, of the games characters not being to generic is this:
The similarity of the characters is demonstrated at A-25-27 and A-70 and the AOB p. 24. The grouping of characters with their individual characteristics and likenesses cannot be considered “stock.”
followed by a side by side of pictures of the characters from show and game. And that's it. In it's entirety. It has it's own header. Well, convincing point well made. /s
And while we are at it, perfect place to mention the
mistakes. Like the passage I just quoted appears again towards the end of the document with a slightly different header and the sentence "the similarities here are striking" added. And there's a factual error where they try to argue that it doesn't matter that the hug sequence was only published in July 2017 and Discovery came out in
October 2017. That would be
September 2017. And don't get me started that they again claim that CBS "admitted" to copying them. Which, noooooo?
I could go on (it's a goldmine) but I feel like I have already sacrificed enough of my time and sanity to this. Please, read it yourself folks, so that I mustn't suffer alone.