Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca3-18-03711/USCOURTS-ca3-18-03711-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 820
Nature of Suit: Copyright
Cause of Action: 

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NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

No. 18-3711

PETER BROWNSTEIN,

Appellant

v.

TINA LINDSAY; ETHNIC TECHNOLOGIES, LLC

On Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of New Jersey

(No. 3-10-cv-1581)

District Judge: Hon. Freda L. Wolfson

Argued November 20, 2019

Before: CHAGARES, MATEY, and FUENTES, Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: May 18, 2020)

Jay R. McDaniel [ARGUED]

Weiner Law Group

629 Parsippany Road

Parsippany, NJ 07054

Counsel for Appellant

Jesse C. Klaproth [ARGUED]

Klaproth Law

Suite 800

1500 Walnut Street

Philadelphia, PA 19102

Counsel for Appellees

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OPINION*

MATEY, Circuit Judge.

Innovators have long recognized that “[m]any ideas grow better when transplanted 

into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The 

Breakfast Table Series: The Poet at the Breakfast Table 146 (1900). So the law encourages 

collaboration and rewards authors of a joint work with the benefits of joint ownership. Peter

Brownstein seeks a declaration of joint ownership in a computer program he developed 

with Tina Lindsay and an accounting of profits. The District Court granted summary 

judgment to Lindsay and her company, Ethnic Technologies (“E-Tech”), seeing no proof

of Brownstein’s role. We will affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

In 1993, Lindsay began compiling a set of rules in order to “predict” a person’s 

ethnicity. Brownstein v. Lindsay, 742 F.3d 55, 59 (3d Cir. 2014). She knew the concept 

had value given her employment at List Services Direct, Inc., a direct-marketing company 

that sold customer lists. Id. at 58–59. So she enlisted Brownstein, a fellow List Services 

employee, to transform her rules into a computer program. Id. at 59. Lindsay’s rules were

known as the Ethnic Determinate System (“EDS”), and Brownstein’s computer code was 

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and, pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7, does 

not constitute binding precedent.

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called “ETHN.” Id. Together, EDS and ETHN became the Lindsay Cultural Identification 

Determinate (“LCID”). Id.

In 1996, List Services asserted ownership of the LCID, prompting Lindsay and 

Brownstein to leave the company in June 1997. Id. at 60. List Services, Lindsay, and 

Brownstein later signed a Settlement Agreement in which Lindsay and Brownstein 

“agree[d] not to claim ownership or any other rights” to “a certain computer program 

concerning ethnic selections” that List Services was “presently using,” and List Services 

“disclaim[ed] any ownership to EDS.” (App. at 317–18.) Years later, things soured 

between Lindsay and Brownstein, and they parted ways. Brownstein, 742 F.3d at 61.

In 2010, Brownstein filed this lawsuit, seeking a declaration that he is co-owner of 

the LCID and an accounting of any profits Lindsay and E-Tech earned from the program

after May 2010. Id. at 61–62. The case proceeded to trial and, at the close of Brownstein’s 

evidence, the District Court granted judgment as a matter of law to the defendants. The 

District Court held that Brownstein’s claims were barred by the statute of limitations and, 

in any event, that Brownstein lacked evidence showing his co-authorship of the LCID. Id.

at 62–63. We reversed on appeal, holding that the accrual date of Brownstein’s claims was 

a jury question. Id. at 69–75. And we relied on an oral argument concession by defendants’

counsel “that Brownstein and Lindsay were co-authors of the LCID up until its 1997 

iteration” to remand for further factual development of the co-authorship issue.

1

Id. at 65, 

77.

1 We also reversed an order by the District Court that cancelled certain copyright 

registrations. Brownstein, 742 F.3d at 58, 63, 77. That issue is not relevant to this appeal.

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On remand, Brownstein filed an amended complaint, which Lindsay and E-Tech

then moved to dismiss. After converting that motion into a motion for summary judgment, 

the District Court held that the Settlement Agreement extinguished Lindsay and 

Brownstein’s rights to all pre-Settlement-Agreement versions of the LCID. (App. at 26.) 

The District Court then described the “operative question” as whether post-SettlementAgreement versions of the LCID “continued to use [Brownstein]’s computer code.” (App. 

at 26.) Although Brownstein submitted an affidavit describing his work on the LCID, and 

copies of text purporting to be relevant computer code, the District Court rejected the 

affidavit as “conclusory” and the code as “not self-evident.” (App. at 29.) For those 

reasons, the court found that Brownstein failed to sustain his burden of production, and

again granted summary judgment to the defendants. This timely appeal followed.2

II. DISCUSSION

Brownstein raises three issues on appeal. First, he argues that the District Court 

erroneously interpreted the Settlement Agreement as “sever[ing]” or “deconstruct[ing]” the 

LCID, (Opening Br. at 28–29), in contravention of established copyright principles, and 

that defendants’ continued use of Lindsay’s rules, by itself, entitles him to compensation. 

It is true that “[t]he authors of a joint work are co[-]owners of copyright in the 

work,” 17 U.S.C. § 201(a), and that each joint author acquires “an undivided ownership in 

the entire work, including all the contributions contained therein.” Nimmer on Copyright 

2 The District Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1338, and 1367. We 

have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and again exercise plenary review over the 

District Court’s grant of summary judgment. Brownstein, 742 F.3d at 64. 

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§ 6.03 (2019); see 17 U.S.C. § 101 (“A ‘joint work’ is a work prepared by two or more 

authors with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or 

interdependent parts of a unitary whole.” (emphasis added)). But as we previously noted, 

the EDS was an “independent work,” of which Lindsay was the “sole author.” Brownstein, 

742 F.3d at 59. And merely using the EDS in the LCID did not affect Lindsay’s ownership 

of her rules, nor give Brownstein any rights in them. Cf. Greene v. Ablon, 794 F.3d 133, 

153 (1st Cir. 2015) (noting that a work “may be both joint and derivative, with [the original 

work’s author] owning the copyright in the underlying work . . . and co-owning the 

copyright in the derivative work”). So the District Court did not split the joint-work atom; 

instead, it correctly interpreted the Settlement Agreement as abrogating both parties’ 

interest in the LCID. And it was not improperly depriving Brownstein of any rights in the 

EDS, since he had none to begin with.

Second, Brownstein argues that the Settlement Agreement did not transfer any

copyrights, but merely evidenced the parties’ decision to “waive[] any rights of 

enforcement they might have had” against the other. (Opening Br. at 43.) But this argument 

ignores language in the Settlement Agreement acknowledging that List Services and its 

executives were the “sole owner(s)” of “a certain computer program concerning ethnic 

selections” that List Services was “presently using.” (App. at 317–18) (emphasis added).

Lindsay and Brownstein weren’t agreeing to cooperatively share the pre-SettlementAgreement LCID with List Services; they were recognizing they no longer “owne[d]” any 

of it, including its copyrights.

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Third, and finally, Brownstein argues that the District Court ignored evidence of his 

post-Settlement-Agreement authorship contribution to the LCID. We need not address this 

issue, since even if Brownstein co-authored some post-Settlement-Agreement version of 

the LCID, he has failed to demonstrate that Lindsay and E-Tech profited from that version, 

or a derivative thereof, in May 2010 or afterward. His complaint concedes that any code 

he authored was “phased out” of defendants’ programs long ago. (App. at 231.) As noted 

above, he never had any rights in the EDS itself, so continued use of those rules entitles 

him to nothing. And he does not otherwise explain, or offer evidence to show, how 

defendants’ post-May-2010 product was derivative of any earlier one.

III. CONCLUSION

As we noted in our previous opinion, Brownstein could prevail only if he 

demonstrated that defendants profited either from a work he jointly authored, or from a 

derivative. Brownstein, 742 F.3d at 67–68. Because he has done neither, his claims fail. 

We will therefore affirm the District Court’s grant of summary judgment.

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