## Facts

- French fashion houses Sarl Louis Feraud International and S.A. Pierre Balmain presented runway collections in France.
- Viewfinder, Inc. operated “firstView.com,” an online fashion site that posted photographs of fashion shows; access to current-season photos was subscription-based, while older photos were freely accessible.
- In France, the plaintiffs sued Viewfinder for unauthorized display of runway photographs revealing new designs.
- A French court entered default money judgments against Viewfinder for copyright infringement and “parasitism” (an unfair-competition-type claim) and awarded damages and other relief.
- Viewfinder did not appear in the French proceedings.
- Plaintiffs sued in the Southern District of New York to recognize and enforce the French money judgments under New York’s Uniform Foreign Money-Judgments Recognition Act (CPLR article 53).
- The district court dismissed, holding recognition would be repugnant to New York public policy because enforcement would violate Viewfinder’s First Amendment rights.

## Issues

1. Whether recognition of the French default money judgments must be denied under CPLR § 5304(b)(4) because enforcement would be repugnant to New York public policy on First Amendment grounds.
2. What analysis a court must perform to decide whether enforcing a foreign intellectual-property judgment would conflict with First Amendment protections, including whether U.S. fair use would protect the conduct and whether the foreign legal regime provides comparable speech-protective limitations.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit vacated the dismissal and remanded.
- The court held the district court did not perform the analysis required before invoking the narrow public-policy exception.
- The court rejected any categorical rule that a media entity has absolute First Amendment immunity from intellectual-property liability.
- The court directed the district court to develop the record and apply U.S. fair-use doctrine in a fact-specific manner, rather than treating fair use as established on a limited record.
- The court instructed the district court to evaluate whether the relevant features of French law provide protections functionally comparable to U.S. First Amendment accommodations embedded in copyright doctrine.

## Legal Principles

- New York’s public-policy exception to recognition of foreign money judgments (CPLR § 5304(b)(4)) is narrowly construed; differences between U.S. and foreign law do not suffice absent conflict with fundamental constitutional rights or basic notions of justice.
- Intellectual-property rights and the First Amendment coexist in U.S. law; the press is not categorically exempt from copyright or related claims.
- In assessing claimed First Amendment repugnancy for a foreign IP judgment, U.S. courts should ordinarily analyze whether the challenged use would be protected under U.S. copyright law, especially fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
- Fair use requires evaluation of the statutory factors (purpose/character, nature of the work, amount/substantiality, and market effect) and typically turns on a developed factual record.
- Even if U.S. law might protect the conduct, nonrecognition depends on whether the foreign regime lacks sufficiently comparable speech-protective limitations; comparability, not identity, is the benchmark.
- The recognition inquiry should not become broad relitigation of the foreign merits; it focuses on whether enforcement would violate fundamental U.S. public policy.

## Conclusion

The Second Circuit required a fuller, doctrine-based inquiry before denying recognition of foreign IP money judgments on First Amendment grounds, including a fact-specific U.S. fair-use analysis and an assessment of whether the foreign legal regime provides speech-protective limitations comparable to those demanded by U.S. public policy.


Sarl Louis Feraud Int’l v. Viewfinder, Inc., 489 F.3d 474 (2d Cir. 2007)