The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today upheld a verdict from early last year that cleared Apple of allegations that one of its hit thriller series was copied from an independent film. Here are the details.
‘Servant’ cleared of copyright infringement allegations
When Apple announced its streaming platform, then known as Apple TV+, one of the many original productions it had in the works was M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological thriller Servant.
Starring Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under), Toby Kebbell (RocknRolla), Nell Tiger Free (The First Omen), and Rupert Grint (Snatch), the series “follows a Philadelphia couple in mourning after an unspeakable tragedy creates a rift in their marriage and opens the door for a mysterious force to enter their home,” per Apple TV’s synopsis.
Shortly after Servant premiered, however, Italian-born director Francesca Gregorini sued Apple and Shyamalan, alleging that the show stole the plot from her 2013 film “The Truth About Emanuel.” She sought as much as $81 million in damages.
While Servant ran for four seasons, wrapping up in 2023, the lawsuit dragged on until January last year, when a jury unanimously ruled in favor of Apple and Shyamalan. Jurors found that the show’s creators had not had access to Gregorini’s film before developing the series.
Gregorini subsequently appealed the verdict, challenging two aspects of the trial.
First, she argued that the jury should have received more detailed instructions on what constitutes “widespread dissemination,” including whether her film was sufficiently well known within the entertainment industry for the creators of Servant to have potentially encountered it.
She also challenged the trial judge’s decision to accept the verdict without first answering a question from jurors seeking clarification on the term “widespread dissemination.”
Today, as the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected both arguments and upheld the jury’s verdict in Apple’s favor
In its decision, the appeals court found that the jury instructions accurately reflected the applicable law and that the trial judge was not required to provide a more detailed definition of what it means for a work to be “widely disseminated.”
It also ruled that the judge did not abuse her discretion by accepting the jury’s unanimous verdict without first answering the jurors’ question.
To read the full decision, follow this link.
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