Piuggi v. Good For You Productions LLC

Jack Piuggi brought suit against HBO, Warner Bros. Discovery, and two independent production companies, Grand Street Media Inc. and Good For You Productions LLC (GFY), alleging that defendants had conspired to steal his idea for a reality TV show. Piuggi claimed that, in January 2021, he conceived of a show called Instafamous, which he described as “a documentary-style TV show incorporating an underlying faux-dating show competition” that would “expose the superficiality of Instagram [and] 2020s dating culture, while simultaneously causing the contestants” to “reveal their true and selfish nature.” Piuggi alleged that two HBO-released TV shows—Fake Famous and FBOY Island—were substantially similar to his ideas for Instafamous and that defendants appropriated those ideas. Piuggi’s asserted claims for copyright infringement, breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and unjust enrichment.

 

According to Piuggi, after he created his concept for Instafamous, he met with Grand Street and, upon both parties’ execution of a nondisclosure agreement, pitched his idea for the show. Following that pitch meeting, Piuggi allegedly sent Grand Street a 40-page treatment for Instafamous. Grand Street declined to produce the show but referred Piuggi to GFY, which also signed a nondisclosure agreement with Piuggi before hearing his pitch for the show. Two days after that meeting, HBO released a trailer for the reality TV program Fake Famous, though Piuggi was unaware of it at the time. Piuggi continued developing the idea for Instafamous with GFY, and on Feb. 1, 2021, he paid GFY $2,500 as a “50% good faith deposit for the first phase” of development of Instafamous. A few days later, GFY informed Piuggi of the existence of Fake Famous. Over the next two months, Piuggi grew more concerned that his ideas for Instafamous had been appropriated. For example, after suggesting to GFY that his friend should be cast in Instafamous, Piuggi learned that the friend had already been cast in another upcoming HBO reality show named FBOY Island. That friend later called Piuggi from the set of FBOY Island, which the friend referred to as “your TV show,” and described elements of the show that Piuggi believed had been copied from his idea for Instafamous. Piuggi also claimed that a GFY executive admitted that he had shared ideas from Instafamous with a man who was a camera operator for a show named American Chopper, which was produced by Discovery before it was acquired by HBO’s parent, Warner Bros. Piuggi subsequently obtained a copyright registration for Instafamous, effective Dec. 13, 2022, and filed his lawsuit on May 2, 2023.

 

At various times, defendants indicated that they intended to move to dismiss Piuggi’s claims by filing pre-motion letters with the district court and joining in other defendants’ motions. In some instances, Piuggi failed to respond to the pre-motion letters, and those letters were then deemed by the court to constitute opening briefing on the motion to dismiss. Piuggi filed a number of oppositions to defendants’ various motions to dismiss, in one instance attaching a 28-page affidavit with 17 exhibits, and later submitted a 55-page document that Piuggi described as the treatment for Instafamous. The court refused to consider Piuggi’s affidavit or any of the exhibits he had filed, except the nondisclosure agreements and proof of his $2,500 payment to GFY. 

 

The court first analyzed defendants’ motions to dismiss Piuggi’s copyright infringement claim, “based on allegations [that the defendants] engaged in a ‘concerted’ effort to appropriate Instafamous to produce Fake Famous and FBOY Island.” Finding Piuggi’s copyright registration certificate to be sufficient evidence of his ownership of a valid copyright in Instafamous, the court then examined whether Piuggi had sufficiently alleged that defendants had actually copied his work by demonstrating that they had access to the work. Stating that “[a]ccess means that an alleged infringer had a ‘reasonable possibility’—not simply a ‘bare possibility’—of [accessing] the prior work,” the court noted that while Piuggi had shared Instafamous with Grand Street and GFY, the party that produced and distributed Fake Famous and FBOY Island was HBO, not Grand Street or GFY. The court concluded that Piuggi had not credibly demonstrated that HBO had access to Instafamous, finding Piuggi’s bare assertions of a conspiracy to be unsupported and other alleged ties between certain individuals connected to Grand Street or GFY and HBO to be too tenuous. The court held that “the mere fact that [d]efendants have some remote connections in common is not enough to ‘nudge’ Piuggi’s allegation of actual copying ‘across the line from conceivable to plausible.’”

 

Though the court’s finding that Piuggi had not alleged access was fatal to his copyright claim, the court nonetheless analyzed whether Piuggi had sufficiently alleged substantial similarity between Instafamous and Fake Famous or FBOY Island. The court found that Piuggi’s allegations “do not come close” to doing so. First, Piuggi failed to identify the protectable elements of his work, instead repeatedly alleging that his “ideas” and “concepts”—which are not copyrightable—were stolen. Second, the court held that other alleged elements of Instafamous that Piuggi claimed were copied, such as characters, plot lines and shooting locations, constituted “stock concepts” common to reality dating shows and were not protectable. Moreover, the court found Piuggi’s allegations to be vague and conclusory, particularly given the fact that Piuggi had failed to attach his treatment of Instafamous to his complaint, making it impossible for the court to compare the total concept and overall feel of the works. Accordingly, the court dismissed Piuggi’s copyright infringement claim.

 

Next, the court turned to Piuggi’s claim that Grand Street and GFY had breached the nondisclosure agreements and that GFY had breached an implied contract to develop Instafamous. Defendants asserted that those claims were preempted by the Copyright Act because they were predicated on the alleged copying of Piuggi’s work. While the court noted the challenging nature of this question, it also determined that Piuggi had not addressed this argument in his oppositions and had therefore waived any arguments against preemption. Additionally, the court held that Piuggi failed to allege the existence of an implied contract with GFY and provided no insight into what GFY had allegedly done to breach that agreement. Therefore, the court dismissed Piuggi’s contract claims. The court also dismissed Piuggi’s claim for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing as being coextensive with and duplicative of his breach of contract claims.

 

Examining Piuggi’s unjust enrichment claim, the court found that it too was preempted by the Copyright Act. Concluding that “[t]he gravamen of Piuggi’s claim is that GFY was unjustly enriched at Piuggi’s expense by its unauthorized copying of Instafamous,” the court held that the claim fell squarely within the scope of the Copyright Act and was therefore preempted.

 

While the court dismissed the entirety of Piuggi’s claims, given the liberal standard for amending pleadings, the court granted Piuggi leave to amend. The opportunity to amend would not apply to Piuggi’s request for statutory damages and attorneys’ fees, however, as the court concluded that Piuggi cannot obtain this relief based on his registration of his work after the allegedly infringing acts began.

 

Summary prepared by Kyle Petersen and Tal Dickstein