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Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Dispute Over ‘Raging Bull’

Variety

by Jonathan B. Sokol

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that it would hear a case involving the rights to “Raging Bull.”

The case before the high court — brought by the daughter of one of Jake LaMotta’s friends and co-authors — isn’t about who owns the rights to the acclaimed story. Instead, it is a challenge to the way that lower courts dismissed Paula Petrella’s case against MGM. A district court and the 9th Circuit argued that she waited too long to bring the case — something called the doctrine of laches — but Petrella’s legal team argued that other circuits have rendered opposite judgments of whether such reasoning should apply.

The case has implications for entertainment because laches has been a way for studios to have certain claims of copyright ownership easily dismissed, particularly in the 9th Circuit which covers western states.

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