It’s official: Jared Leto‘s legal bout with TMZ is going into extra rounds.
Attorneys for “Suicide Squad” star Leto filed a notice of appeal Thursday in Leto’s complaint against the celebrity website, after a judge shot his lawsuit down last month.
Leto filed a copyright infringement suit against TMZ in December, claiming that a video it published, in which Leto said that he didn’t “give a f-k” about Taylor Swift, was an “unauthorized or stolen copy,” and that the video was “private and confidential and not meant to be publicly released.”
However, a judge saw things otherwise, ruling that the videographer, Naeem Munaf, was never an employee of Leto’s and and did not agree in writing to make the video a work-made-for-hire prior to shooting it in September 2015.
A day after the judge granted summary judgment to TMZ, Leto signaled his intention to appeal, asserting in a statement that TMZ purchased “stolen goods.”
“It was wrong of TMZ to purchase stolen goods. It was wrong of TMZ to exploit material that did not belong to them,” Leto said. “Neither myself, nor the employee in question, have any confusion around the issue at hand – he was an employee who was hired to work for us and the footage he shot in the privacy of my home studio was owned by me.”
The actor also painted the issue in moral terms.
“We decided to fight back because it was the right thing to do. We will continue to fight because it is the right thing to do,” Leto said. “Using antiquated laws to find loopholes that hurt, shame and slander people in the name of ‘news’ isn’t just a legal issue, it is a moral one.”
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.