Embedded Digital Content and the Server Test with Sara Gates (Ep. 67)

In this episode, staff member, Daniel McAuliffe, talks to Sara Gates, a managing associate in the New York office of Dentons. Sara, whose practice in part focuses on copyright and trademark matters, walks us through the legal significance of embedded digital content.

Embedding is a tool made available by many social media organizations. It allows users to populate digital content onto their websites without storing the content on their own server. Sara specifically highlights how courts have differed in their treatment of copyright claims that present the issue of embedded content. Courts in the Ninth Circuit, for example, have applied what’s known as the “Server Test.” Meanwhile, judges in the Southern District of New York have rejected the “Server Test.” Sara explains some of the legal reasoning that judges have applied to these claims and frames an area of unsettled law in the digital age. Sara graduated from Fordham Law School in 2017 and is a former editor-in-chief of the Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal.