Apple and M. Night Shyamalan Win Servant Copyright Appeal

Apple and director M. Night Shyamalan have defeated an appeal challenging their victory in a copyright lawsuit that accused the Apple TV+ series Servant of copying filmmaker Francesca Gregorini's independent film The Truth About Emanuel.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a jury verdict in favour of Apple, Shyamalan and other defendants, rejecting Gregorini's arguments that errors during the trial prevented the jury from properly considering whether the creators of Servant had access to her film.

Gregorini, who wrote, directed and produced The Truth About Emanuel, sued Apple and Shyamalan in 2020. She alleged that the first three episodes of Servant were substantially similar to her film and infringed her copyright.

Both productions involve a mother grieving the death of a baby who forms an attachment to a realistic doll. Gregorini argued that Servant copied protected elements of her earlier work.

The litigation had already reached the Ninth Circuit once. A federal district court initially dismissed Gregorini's lawsuit after concluding that the two works were not substantially similar as a matter of law.

The Ninth Circuit reversed that decision in 2022, finding that reasonable minds could differ over substantial similarity. The ruling allowed the dispute to proceed through discovery and ultimately to a jury trial.

The jury subsequently returned a verdict for Apple, Shyamalan and the other defendants after finding that Gregorini had failed to establish that the makers of Servant had access to The Truth About Emanuel before creating the television series.

That finding was decisive. Without establishing access, Gregorini could not prove the copying required for her copyright infringement claim, meaning the jury did not need to resolve whether the two works were substantially similar.

Gregorini appealed again, challenging the district court's instructions to the jury on access and its handling of a question raised during deliberations.

She argued that jurors should have received more detailed instructions explaining the different ways in which access to a copyrighted work could be established.

The Ninth Circuit rejected the argument. It concluded that the district court did not err by giving the circuit's model jury instruction on access without separately identifying the different methods through which Gregorini could seek to prove it.

The appeal also concerned the meaning of "widely disseminated". During deliberations, jurors asked the district court to clarify the term, which was relevant to Gregorini's attempt to establish that her film had been sufficiently available for the defendants to have encountered it.

The district court declined to provide a new definition and instead allowed the parties to offer competing explanations. Gregorini argued on appeal that the judge should have answered the jury's question directly.

The Ninth Circuit rejected that challenge as well, concluding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in handling the jury's request.

The decision leaves the defence verdict intact and illustrates the importance of access evidence in copyright litigation involving allegedly similar creative works. Identifying similarities between two productions does not by itself establish that one was copied from the other.

The procedural history is also significant. Gregorini successfully overturned the original dismissal of her lawsuit and secured the opportunity to pursue discovery and present her case to a jury. Her claim ultimately failed, however, when jurors concluded that she had not established that the defendants had access to her film.

For filmmakers, studios and their legal advisers, the case demonstrates the evidential hurdles that can remain even after a copyright claimant survives an early attempt to dismiss a lawsuit. Similarity may be sufficient to justify further litigation, but a claimant must still establish the factual elements necessary to prove copying at trial.

The Ninth Circuit's latest ruling does not establish new binding precedent because it was issued as an unpublished memorandum disposition. It does, however, leave Apple's and Shyamalan's jury victory intact and ends Gregorini's latest attempt to overturn the trial result at the appellate level.

The case is Gregorini v. Apple Inc., No. 25-3225, before the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.