There were definitely elements of 'significant attempts to mislead'.
The most glaring? The copy of the original score supplied during Discovery by Warner? Perfectly clear and legible. Except for (shocking) the Copyright/Authorship line at the bottom, which was smeared beyond recognition.
Warner resisted supplying the original, saying the copy was a perfect facsimile. When eventually ordered to do so, (shocking), the Copyright/Authorship line was perfectly legible too, contradicted Warner's claim, and showed that Warner had had no authority or right to be licensing performance.
Trying to find something definitive, and some of my details weren't accurate:
"The "smoking gun" in the whole thing was the copy of the original publication that Warner presented to the court. It has a smudged-out piece of text that they claimed no knowledge of. Someone found a copy of the book in a library, and the text wasn't smudged out. It was the original copyright information."
It's one of those crimes that requires knowingly lying. If you can convince the court that you were honestly mistaken, who's to say that you weren't? It might be hard to enforce in this case.
The original they provided a copy from wasn't blurred/smudged and they claimed under oath that it was? Sounds pretty clear cut - are they going to claim they had a booger on their glasses or something?? The smudged bit being the vital information pertinent to the case, seems to be beyond reasonable doubt on that basis, would be interested to hear the story their lawyers concoct ... sure it would/will be equal to some of Disney's greatest works of fiction.
The most glaring? The copy of the original score supplied during Discovery by Warner? Perfectly clear and legible. Except for (shocking) the Copyright/Authorship line at the bottom, which was smeared beyond recognition.
Warner resisted supplying the original, saying the copy was a perfect facsimile. When eventually ordered to do so, (shocking), the Copyright/Authorship line was perfectly legible too, contradicted Warner's claim, and showed that Warner had had no authority or right to be licensing performance.