Law Commons^™

The Continuing Vitality Of The Presumption Of Irreparable Harm In Copyright Cases, Andrew F. Spillane

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

Property has long enjoyed civil enforcement through a potent remedy: the permanent injunction. For decades, federal courts across the country roundly granted permanent relief upon finding infringement and a threat of future infringement of one type of property: copyrights. Beyond these showings, a prevailing plaintiff in a copyright infringement case would not have to prove the cornerstone of equitable relief—irreparable harm—to obtain an injunction. But after the U.S. Supreme Court¹s decision in eBay v. MercExchange, some courts have abandoned this truncated equitable inquiry. In its place, the lower federal courts now apply eBay's four-factor test to determine whether a copyright …