The Ninth Circuit's two-part substantial similarity test works by evaluating whether works share similarities that would be apparent to ordinary observers and whether those similarities stem from protected expression rather than unprotected elements like ideas or facts.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers California and most of the Western U.S., just delivered good news for digital privacy: abandoning a phone doesn't abandon your Fourth Amendment rights in the phone's contents. In United States v. Hunt, the court made clear that no longer having control of a device is not the same thing as surrendering the privacy of the information it contains.
People who gather to watch sideshows garnered an unusual legal win, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just did donuts all over Alameda County's law saying that it's a crime to even watch a sideshow, and they struck that law down. City governments all over the Bay Area have been grasping at straws for ways they can discourage or prevent sideshows from happening nigh every weekend during the warm-weather months.
The Supreme Court in April already overturned a district judge's injunction that prevented the firings of employees in their probationary periods, but the order has not yet been formally revoked. Following the high court's ruling, the district judge in California demanded federal agencies send letters to impacted workers notifying them that their dismissals were part of an effort to shrink government and not due to their individual performances.
