{"id":4017,"date":"2026-03-26T20:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/words-of-a-feather-must-be-read-together-misappropriation-exclusion-held-inapplicable-to-copyright-infringement-claims-wiley-rein-llp\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T20:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:38:08","slug":"words-of-a-feather-must-be-read-together-misappropriation-exclusion-held-inapplicable-to-copyright-infringement-claims-wiley-rein-llp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/words-of-a-feather-must-be-read-together-misappropriation-exclusion-held-inapplicable-to-copyright-infringement-claims-wiley-rein-llp\/","title":{"rendered":"Words of a Feather Must be Read Together: Misappropriation Exclusion Held Inapplicable to Copyright Infringement Claims | Wiley Rein LLP"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A federal district court applying Massachusetts law determined that an exclusion for the \u201cmisappropriation\u201d or \u201cimproper use\u201d of other property could not be read to bar coverage for an underlying copyright infringement lawsuit. Nichole Sliney Realty Team, Inc. v. Mount Vernon Fire Ins. Co.<\/em>, 2026 WL 371144 (D. Mass. Feb. 10, 2026).<\/p>\n

The insured, a real estate agency, was sued for copyright infringement based upon its use of an architect\u2019s drawing in its marketing materials. The insurer ultimately denied coverage for the underlying lawsuit pursuant to an exclusion for \u201cdisputes involving . . . conversion, misappropriation, commingling, improper use, theft, embezzlement or defalcation of funds, account information or other property.\u201d The insured then filed a declaratory judgment action and moved for judgment on the pleadings on the issue of the insurer\u2019s duty to defend the underlying lawsuit.<\/p>\n

In granting the insured\u2019s motion and ruling that the insurer owed a duty to defend, the court rejected the insurer\u2019s argument that the exclusion barred coverage for the underlying litigation because the copyright infringement claim involved the \u201cmisappropriation\u201d or \u201cimproper use\u201d of \u201cother property.\u201d The court determined that the insurer\u2019s interpretation was incorrect for multiple reasons. First, the court noted that, under the canons of construction of ejusdem generis<\/em> and noscitur a sociis<\/em>, the terms of an insurance policy should be read within the context of the words surrounding it. As such, the court concluded that, based on the exclusion\u2019s inclusion of the terms \u201cfunds\u201d and \u201caccount information,\u201d the term \u201cother property\u201d should be interpreted to refer only to other types of financial property\u2014and not to intellectual property. Second, the court found that the terms \u201cmisappropriation\u201d and \u201cimproper use\u201d could not be construed to apply to claims arising out of negligent conduct or statutory violations because the other terms surrounding it referred to intentionally tortious conduct, such as \u201cconversion,\u201d \u201ccommingling,\u201d \u201ctheft,\u201d and \u201cembezzlement.\u201d Third, the court noted that the exclusion did not include the word \u201cinfringement,\u201d the \u201cnormal term\u201d generally associated with copyright violations. Finally, the court read the exclusion in the context of the likely business risks that a reasonable insured would expect to be covered by the policy and concluded that the exclusion could not bar coverage for copyright infringement claims stemming from the images used in a real estate agent\u2019s marketing materials, as doing so would eliminate a \u201csubstantial portion of the risks that the insured would expect to be covered.\u201d<\/p>\n

[View source.]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal district court applying Massachusetts law determined that an exclusion for the \u201cmisappropriation\u201d or \u201cimproper use\u201d of other property could not be read to bar coverage for an underlying copyright infringement lawsuit. Nichole Sliney Realty Team, Inc. v. Mount Vernon Fire Ins. Co., 2026 WL 371144 (D. Mass. Feb. 10, 2026). The insured, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[263,2793,1917,2788,2791,2792,2794,2132,2790,2789,2796,2795,2787],"class_list":["post-4017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-claims","tag-copyright","tag-exclusion","tag-feather","tag-held","tag-inapplicable","tag-infringement","tag-llp","tag-misappropriation","tag-read","tag-rein","tag-wiley","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}