Mark Mahon v. Apple Inc., et al.

Judicial estoppel is an equitable doctrine designed to protect the integrity of judicial proceedings. It ordinarily applies only where a party has actually taken a prior position, a court has accepted that position, and the party later seeks an unfair advantage by taking a clearly inconsistent position. In these related copyright appeals, judicial estoppel was applied against Petitioner based on a purported 2016 declaration attributed to him. Petitioner preserved sworn record evidence that he did not execute that declaration, had not seen it before April 2020, and maintained that it was forged and unauthorized. The courts nevertheless treated the declaration as Petitioner’s prior position without resolving, or meaningfully addressing, the preserved dispute over authenticity, provenance, execution, and attribution. The questions presented are:

1. Whether a federal court may apply judicial estoppel to bar a copyright plaintiffs ownership or standing position based on an alleged “prior position” where the litigant preserved sworn record evidence that the statement was not his, was not executed by him, and was materially disputed as to authenticity, provenance, execution, and attribution.

2. Whether judicial estoppel may be applied without evaluating, on the preserved record, whether the alleged prior position was actually attributable to the litigant, whether a court accepted that position, and whether the litigant obtained or would obtain an unfair advantage.

3. Whether preserved record evidence of U.S.- based copying, reproduction, use, distribution, reformatting, platform activity, or distribution-chain conduct can create a triable issue of domestic copyright infringement where some downstream exploitation also occurred abroad.