Brief a given case-
Plaintiff
Jordan Smith is a 30-year-old entrepreneur living in Asheville, North Carolina that has been creating YouTube videos under the name/company "The Coding Geek" for the past five years. The videos he makes are targeted towards beginner programmers who want to learn how to code various computer languages. It started out as a side project or hobby, but has since gained a large following and subscriber base. YouTube offered him a partnership and it has now become his main source of income. Smith receives money from YouTube for subscribers and views and also money from a donation button he has on his company's website. He averages a salary of about $70,000 a year. Smith plans to eventually release a DVD and/or book series on computer programming.
Xavier Computer Academy is a company located in Sacramento, California, operated by a website that was established in 2002 which offers programming courses to users for a fee. They offer users either a one-time purchase for each type of computer language course, or users can pay a monthly subscription of $14.99 for unlimited access to all courses and content. Xavier Computer Academy has recently decided to provide more contents to its users and now offers videos for certain programming courses. Xavier Computer Academy has roughly 120 employees, and brings in about $10,000,000 a year, with expenses (ie: servers, bandwidth, etc) coming to about $2,000,000 a year. With the addition of the new videos added to courses, they expect their user base to increase and upping their income to at least $15,000,000 in next year.
While browsing his company email one day, Smith comes across an interesting subject line in his inbox titled, "Your videos are being stolen!!" Curious, he decides to open it, and it contains a link and detailsfrom one of his viewers how a website called Xavier Computer Academy is using his YouTube videos - and charging users to view them! The videos were uploaded and played on through the Xavier Computer Academy website and NOT being linked to his YouTube channel.
Since Smith is partnered through YouTube, most of his revenue is made from advertisements and followers. Smith emails Xavier Computer Academy and accuses them of stealing his intellectual property. Xavier Computer Academy replies stating because Smith did not "copyright" the material on the video it means they are allowed to use it. Smith replies he will allow them to keep using the videos if they use the linked YouTube videos and a clearly marked source link under the videos directing the viewer back to his YouTube channel, so that he receives credit and still receives an income off of it, since they are his creations. Xavier Computer Academy refuses to do so; claiming Smith is trying to profit off of their website.
These are the events that led to Jordan Smith ("The Coding Geek") filing a suit against Xavier Computer Academy.