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Title VII – Discrimination – Copyright Infringement

By: Derek Hawkins//September 28, 2015//

Title VII – Discrimination – Copyright Infringement

By: Derek Hawkins//September 28, 2015//

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Civil

7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and ROVNER, Circuit Judge, and SPRINGMANN, District Judge.

Title VII – Discrimination – Copyright Infringement

No.14-2402 Gregory Rahn v. Board of Trustees of Northern Illinois University

University failure to hire appellant for tenured position fails to constitute discrimination. Failure to point out specific violations of relevant copyright law fatal to infringement claim.

“To prevail under the direct method, a plaintiff must produce “either direct or circumstantial evidence that would permit a jury to infer that discrimination motivated an adverse employment action.” Langenbach v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 761 F.3d 792, 802 (7th Cir. 2014). Direct evidence is evidence of discriminatory intent without resort to inference, such as an admission of discriminatory intent often referred to as “smoking gun” evidence. Ripberger v. Corizon, 773 F.3d 871, 877 (7th Cir. 2014); Hutt v. AbbVie Products, LLC, 757 F.3d 687, 691 (7th Cir. 2014). Here, there is no such direct evidence. Rahn submits that the statement by Vohra regarding hiring a qualified minority candidate over a white one is dispositive direct evidence that he was not hired because of his race. Vohra, however, did not make the decision to eliminate Rahn from consideration. The search committee, applying the factors deemed relevant to the job, eliminated him from consideration. Vohra chose between the two candidates submitted to him by the committee, but Rahn was not in that pairing. Accordingly, the statement by Vohra is not evidence “without resort to inference” that the hiring decision was based on his race.“

“It is impossible to discern the basis for this claim, however, because the plaintiffs fail to cite to a single case in presenting this argument. The only legal citations in this portion of the argument relate to the sections concerning the proper weight that the district court should have given to certain affidavits in considering his copyright claim. As to the legal basis for the copyright claim itself, the plaintiffs neither identify the relevant copyright law nor do they identify the aspects of the law that the defendants allegedly violated. Instead, they devote the entirety of this argument to speculative assertions that Rahn’s forwarding of the power point presentation was somehow coerced, or that the power point was distributed to competitors within NIU”

Affirmed

Full Text


Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.

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