Ninth Circuit Stops Monkeying Around And Denies En Banc Review Of The Monkey Selfie Case

Whatever will we do without the Monkey Selfie case rearing its not-actually-copyrighted head every few months? We might finally get to find out, now that the Ninth Circuit has declined to rehear the appeal en banc. This denial now makes clear that monkeys lack standing to sue for copyright, at least within the Ninth Circuit. Someday (hopefully not soon) we may find out what other Circuits have to say about primate copyrights, but for now we can finally be confident that they lack standing to sue over them here.

Provided that no cert petition is granted, of course. And given that this is a case that has thus far steadfastly refused to end, it is way too soon to be confident that this is truly the last we've heard from Naruto or any of his alleged next friends. We should at least know whether a cert petition's been filed in about three months or so, though (see Rule 13), so stay tuned...