Charges about recording dances in Fortnite have been dropped for the time being

The American law firm Pierce Bainbridge will not continue with the various charges from rappers and actors in which they target Fortnite maker Epic Games for recording dances they have claimed in Fortnite.

Lawyer David Hecht says in an email to Kotaku that in the United States it was previously possible to file a lawsuit against a party in the event of an alleged copyright infringement, even before registration with the US Copyright Office was completed. This is the official US government agency that maintains copyright records. However, that has now changed; a complaining party must complete its registration with this agency before a case can be commenced.

Based on this, Pierce Bainbridge has decided to suspend the pending cases against Epic Games. This office represents the rapper 2 Milly and Alfonso Ribeiro, among others, in their efforts to make Epic Games pay for recording their claimed dances in Fortnite. The latter is an actor from the TV series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in which he performed a specific dance of his own called the Carlton dance.

This change stems from a recent US Supreme Court ruling. It stipulated that people must complete a registration with the US Copyright Office before being admissible in any private law lawsuit involving copyright infringement.

All charges have been dropped for now, as they were brought right after the initial filing with the US agency. Should the US Copyright Office ultimately approve the registrations, the lawsuits will continue.

However, the chance that this will happen in the short term does not seem very great. The copyright office already determined in February that Ribeiro will not receive copyright on the Carlton dance. The bureau motivated this by stating that such a dance is only a ‘simple dance routine’ and that it cannot be regarded as a ‘choreographic work’. Under US copyright law, an assignment is only possible in the latter case.