No. 25-754

Rodney Woodland v. Montero Lamar Hill

Lower Court: Ninth Circuit
Docketed: 2025-12-29
Status: Pending
Type: Paid
Tags: burrow-giles-precedent circuit-split copyright-law feist-decision legal-standard photography-copyright
Key Terms:
Patent Copyright JusticiabilityDoctri
Latest Conference: 2026-02-27
Question Presented (AI Summary)

Whether copyrightability is a pure question of law or includes considerations of background facts, given a Circuit split on the issue

Question Presented (OCR Extract)

1. Whether , on an acknowledged Circuit split, copyrightability is a pure question of law, as the Ninth Circuit held below, or includes considerations of background facts , either as a pure question of fact or as a mixed question of law and fact, as heavily implied by this Court ’s decision in Feist and expressly adopted by other Circuits citing Feist . 2. Whether copyright protection for photography is only selection and arrangement as the Ninth Circuit held in Rentmeester and extended below, or whether copyright protection for photography is assessed just as for all other works of the visual arts that Congress placed on an equal footing in 17 U.S.C. § 101 and in accordance with this Court ’s seminal decision in Burrow -Giles . ii PARTIES BELOW The

Docket Entries

2026-02-11
DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 2/27/2026.
2025-12-22
Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due January 28, 2026)
2025-10-17
Application (25A446) granted by Justice Kagan extending the time to file until December 21, 2025.
2025-10-14
Application (25A446) to extend the time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari from October 22, 2025 to December 21, 2025, submitted to Justice Kagan.

Attorneys

Rodney Woodland
Andrew Benedict GrimmDigital Justice Foundation, Inc., Petitioner
Andrew Benedict GrimmDigital Justice Foundation, Inc., Petitioner
Andrew Benedict GrimmDigital Justice Foundation, Inc., Petitioner