Nancey Silvers v. Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.

Appellant Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. (“Sony”) makes an interlocutory appeal challenging the district court’s ruling that an accrued cause of action for copyright infringement may be assigned to a third party, thereby granting the assignee the right to sue for the infringement violation. We affirm the district court’s ruling.

BACKGROUND

In 1991, Appellee Nancey Silvers, a writer and producer of television movies, began writing a script about the relationship between a mother, who discovers she has cancer, and her ex-husband’s new wife, who will raise the mother’s children when the mother dies. In 1995, the script was made into a CBS movie called “The Other Woman.” Silvers completed the script as a work-for-hire for Frank and Bob Films II, aka Von Zerneek/Sertner Films, who owns the copyright to the movie.

In 1998, Sony released the motion picture “Stepmom,” a film starring Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon and Ed Harris. After the release of “Stepmom,” Von Zer-neck/Sertner Films and Frank and Bob Films II executed an “Assignment of Claims and Causes of Action” selling, transferring and assigning to Nancey Silvers “all right, title and interest in and to any claims and causes…