Barry Cook
9-29-2014
Copyright law

Defendant appealed from the declaratory judgment rendered by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in favor of plaintiff, declaring that its insertion of star pagination to defendant's case reporters did not infringe defendant's copyright, and declaring that its case reports contained no copyrightable material and could be copied without infringement by intervenor. Following the commencement of suit by plaintiff in the district court seeking a judgment declaring that its insertion of star pagination to defendant's case reporters did not infringe defendant's copyright, intervenor sought a declaration that its redacted versions of defendant's case reports contained no copyrightable material and thus could be copied without infringement. On the star pagination issue, the district court granted summary judgment to plaintiff and intervenor. The court affirmed that ruling. The question presented was whether defendant's alterations to the case reports demonstrated sufficient originality and creativity to be copyrightable. The court affirmed the district court's finding that defendant's alteration of opinions did not reflect an exercise of originality or creativity, in part because defendant's realistic options were limited. The court could not find that the conclusion was unreasonable. In addition, affording these decisions copyright protection could give defendant an effective monopoly over commercial publication of case reports.
The court affirmed the district court's judgment, concluding that in light of accepted legal conventions and other external constraining factors, defendant's choices on selection and arrangement could reasonably be viewed as obvious, typical, and lacking even minimal creativity. Therefore, the court did not err in concluding that those elements from defendant's case reports that were sought to be copied were not copyrightable.