Judge Tigar issued his order granting the plaintiffs’ motion for leave to file an interlocutory appeal on his dismissal of the DMCA copyright management information (CMI) claims under 17 U.S.C. s. 1202(b).
Second, the Court finds there is substantial ground for difference of opinion on thequestion at issue. 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). To determine whether there is a “substantial ground for difference of opinion,” courts examine “to what extent the controlling law is unclear.” Couch, 611 F.3d at 633. “[A] party’s strong disagreement with the Court’s ruling is not sufficient for there to be a ‘substantial ground for difference.’” Id. (quotation marks omitted). A substantial ground for difference of opinion may exist where “the circuits are in dispute on the question and the court of appeals of the circuit has not spoken on the point, if complicated questions arise under foreign law, or if novel and difficult questions of first impression are presented.” Id. (quoting 3 Federal
Procedure, Lawyers Edition § 3:212 (2010) (footnotes omitted)). To this Court’s knowledge no court of appeal has ruled on this issue, and district courts have reached differing conclusions. See, e.g., Anderson v. Stability AI Ltd., No. 23-cv-00201-WHO, 2024 WL 3823234, at *8 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 12, 2024) (finding DMCA Section 1202(b) claims have an identicality requirement); Beijing Meishe Network Tech. Co., Ltd., v. TikTok Inc., No. 23-cv-06012-SI, 2024 WL 3522196, at *9 (N.D. Cal. July 23, 2024) (declining to dismiss on identicality grounds); ADR Int’l Ltd. v. Inst. for Supply Mgmt. Inc., 667 F. Supp. 3d 411, 427 (S.D. Tex. 2023) (“Based on the plain wording of the statute, the Court is not persuaded that the DMCA includes an ‘identical copy’ requirement.”); Kirk Kara Corp v. W. Stone & Metal Corp., No. CV 20-1931-DMG (Ex), 2020 WL 5991503 (C.D. Cal. Aug. 14, 2020) (adopting an “identicality” standard); Oracle Int’l Corp. v. Rimini St., Inc., No. 2:14-cv-01699-MMD-DJA, 2023 WL 4706127, at *82 (D. Nev. July 24, 2023) (“The Court also rejects Rimini’s argument . . . that a work that removes copyright management information must be an exact copy of the original work. This construction of the DMCA would weaken the statute’s intended protections for copy right holders.”). “One of the best indications that there are substantial grounds for disagreement on a question of law is that other courts have, in fact, disagreed.” Rollins v. Dignity Health, No. 13-cv-01450-TEH, 2014 WL 6693891, at *3 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 26, 2014). Given this split in authority the Court finds there are substantial grounds for disagreement on this issue.