Source: https://casetext.com/case/ashton-tate-corp-v-ross
Timestamp: 2020-01-26 13:18:29
Document Index: 458361539

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2740', '§ 2719', '§ 101', '§ 201', '§ 6', '§ 4', '§ 201', '§ 6', '§ 3426', '§ 3426', '§ 3426', '§ 3426', '§ 7']

Ashton-Tate Corp. v. Ross, 916 F.2d 516 | Casetext
Ashton-Tate Corp. v. Ross
McCaffree Financial Corp. v. Nunnink
209 Kan. at 391, 399. Our research reveals only one federal case, applying California law, which has…
Intermedics, Inc. v. Ventritex, Inc.
This simply is not the law. See, e.g., Ashton-Tate Corp. v. Ross, 916 F.2d 516 (9th Cir. 1990) and Whittaker…
Full title:ASHTON-TATE CORPORATION, A DELAWARE CORPORATION,…
Date published: Oct 4, 1990
916 F.2d 516 (9th Cir. 1990)
noting that "implication and logic require that a [motion for a continuance] be made prior to the summary judgment hearing."
Summary of this case from Castro v. Tex. Dep't of Criminal Justice
No. 89-15683.
Paul N. McCloskey, Jr., McCloskey Kays, Menlo Park, Cal., for defendants-counterclaimants-appellants.
Gary L. Reback, Fenwick, Davis West, Palo Alto, Cal., for plaintiff-counterdefendant-appellee.
This appeal involves a dispute over the copyright ownership of a computer spread-sheet program called "Full Impact" and the alleged misappropriation of Appellants' trade secrets by Ashton-Tate. The district court published its order granting summary judgment on all claims in favor of Ashton-Tate. Ashton-Tate v. Ross, 728 F. Supp. 597 (N.D.Cal. 1989). Appellants, Richard Ross and his company Bravo Technologies, Inc., argue that the district court abused its discretion by refusing to consider their supplemental brief in opposition to the summary judgment motion. They also argue that the district court erred in any event by declaring Ashton-Tate the sole owner of the copyright in Full Impact. Finally, they argue that the district court should not have ruled that their trade secret claims were time-barred. We affirm.
On April 4, 1989, the district court issued a published order granting Ashton-Tate's motion for summary judgment on all issues. 728 F. Supp. 597. The court held that even if there was an agreement to collaborate, Ross's contribution of ideas to the user interface written by Wigginton was insufficient to make Ross a joint author of the interface. 728 F. Supp. at 602.
Denial of a Rule 56(f) application is reviewed for abuse of discretion. Visa Int'l Service v. Bankcard Holders, 784 F.2d 1472, 1475 (9th Cir. 1986). The district court's grant of summary judgment is reviewed de novo. Kruso v. International Tel. Tel. Corp., 872 F.2d 1416, 1421 (9th Cir. 1989), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 110 S.Ct. 3217, 110 L.Ed.2d 664 (1990).
Ross and Bravo contend that there is no particular time by which a Rule 56(f) request must be made. They cite Garrett v. City and County of San Francisco, 818 F.2d 1515, 1518-19 (9th Cir. 1987) for the proposition that a Rule 56(f) motion can be timely even when filed after the granting of summary judgment. Garrett does not aid appellants. In Garrett, appellant had a discovery motion pending, which this court construed as equivalent to a Rule 56(f) motion, when the district court entered summary judgment. This court merely held that the district court should have considered appellant's discovery request prior to entering summary judgment.
According to Wright, Miller and Kane: Clearly, subdivision (f) must be read in conjunction with subdivision (e) of Rule 56. . . . [W]hen the movant has met the initial burden required for the granting of summary judgment, the opposing party must establish a genuine issue for trial under Rule 56(e) or explain why he cannot yet do so under Rule 56(f). Rule 56(c) states that affidavits filed under either subdivision must be filed prior to the day of the hearing.
10 Wright, Miller Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure: Civil § 2740 (emphasis added).
Rule 56(c) does not explicitly refer to either subdivisions (e) or (f). Rather, it refers to "opposing affidavits." One could argue that a Rule 56(f) motion is not technically an opposing affidavit and that the time restriction in Rule 56(c) does not apply to a Rule 56(f) motion. See Id. § 2719. The problem with such legal sophistry, however, is illustrated by the facts of this case. Appellants' Rule 56(f) motion requested that the district court consider supplemental expert affidavits; it thus amounted to an introduction of additional "opposing affidavits." The district court was not required to allow this effort to avoid reasonable time constraints.
A request for additional time, more discovery, or, in this case, a request to consider late affidavits under Rule 56(f) does "oppose" the entering of summary judgment, which implies that the time constraint in Rule 56(c) should apply. Further, the process of evaluating a summary judgment motion would be flouted if requests for more time, discovery, or the introduction of supplemental affidavits had to be considered even if requested well after the deadline set for the introduction of all information needed to make a ruling has passed. See Pfeil v. Rogers, 757 F.2d 850, 858 (7th Cir. 1985) (district court's decision to disregard all material filed after a reasonable filing deadline was not an abuse of discretion because it allowed court to preserve moving party's right to respond to resisting party's arguments and to decide summary judgment motion in a timely fashion); see also Nestle Co., Inc. v. Chester's Market, Inc., 571 F. Supp. 763, 773 (D.Conn. 1983) (failure to offer any explanation or justification for not filing opposing affidavit until one month after hearing requires that it not be considered; to do otherwise would be bending even the liberal Federal Rules so out of shape as to have no meaning).
As the district court correctly noted, 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." 17 U.S.C. § 101 (1977). The authors of a joint work are co-owners of the copyright in that work. 17 U.S.C. § 201(a). The question presented by Appellants' first theory, where Ross claims authorship on the basis of an alleged agreement to collaborate combined with his noncopyrightable contribution to the interface, is what satisfies the requirements for joint authorship.
The district court held that "[b]ecause Ross only contributed ideas to the Full Impact interface, which by themselves are not protectable, the program is not a `joint work' between Ross and Wigginton." 728 F. Supp. at 602. The rule expressed by the district court — that only contributors of copyrightable material can be authors of a work — is not entirely settled, but is consistent with the direction our circuit has taken.
M. D. Nimmer, 1 Nimmer on Copyright § 6.07, p. 6-18 (1989). Conversely, Goldstein in Copyright: Principles, Law and Practice, takes a different view:
P. Goldstein, Copyright: Principles, Law and Practice, § 4.2.1 p. 379 (1989).
The district court adopted the view championed by Professor Goldstein. This court recently adopted the same position in S.O.S. Inc. v. Payday Inc., 886 F.2d 1081, 1086-87 (9th Cir. 1989). In Payday, the appellee claimed joint authorship of a computer program on the basis of contributions to the design of the program. We ruled that such a contribution was insufficient to raise a material issue of fact about whether such a contributor was a joint author. Id., citing Whelan Assocs. v. Jaslow Dental Laboratory, 609 F. Supp. 1307, 1318-19 (E.D.Pa. 1985), aff'd, 797 F.2d 1222 (3d Cir. 1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1031, 107 S.Ct. 877, 93 L.Ed.2d 831 (1987). We held in Payday that "[t]o be an author, one must supply more than mere direction or ideas; one must `translate an idea into a fixed tangible expression entitled to copyright protection.' Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, [ 490 U.S. 730,] 109 S.Ct. 2166, 2171 [104 L.Ed.2d 811] (1989)." Id.
Payday involved a dispute over a commissioned work. The Reid decision quoted in Payday stated the general rule that a person must translate ideas into copyrightable expression to receive copyright protection as an author of a work. Reid also pointed out, however, that the Copyright Act carves out an important exception for works made for hire. 109 S.Ct. at 2171. Further, Reid left undecided whether joint authorship is another exception to the general rule that to be an author one must make an independently copyrightable contribution to a work. Neither party in Reid had appealed the D.C. Court of Appeals' decision to remand the joint authorship issue to the district court. The D.C. Court of Appeals remanded because it thought it possible that the plaintiff had contributed copyrightable expression to the work, and that one might be an author of a "joint work" by making significant contributions even if they are not independently copyrightable. 846 F.2d 1485, 1496-98 (D.C.Cir. 1988).
Appellants argue that the handwritten list of user commands Ross gave to Wigginton was a fixed expression of Ross's ideas, and as such was entitled to copyright protection. They contend that this list was used by Wigginton to help develop the user interface and therefore, Ross is a joint author of the interface portion of Full Impact. This argument is meritless for the reasons given in the district court's order, 728 F. Supp. at 602. The list simply does not qualify for copyright protection.
The district court focused on the user interface and Ross's contributions to it when determining appellants' joint authorship claim. This made sense, because this was the theory pushed by Appellants, and at the time the contribution requirement for authorship of joint works was not settled in this circuit. It is possible, however, to conceive of the entire MacCalc prototype as a joint work. Indeed, if Ross and Wigginton intended to create a joint work, and both contributed copyrightable material to the resulting work (the MacCalc prototype), then they may have both obtained an undivided interest in the entire work. 17 U.S.C. § 201(a); 1 Nimmer on Copyright, § 6.03 (1989).
In other words, Ross may have obtained a one-half ownership interest in the user interface and Wigginton may have obtained a one-half interest in the engine. We need not decide this issue now, however. Even assuming, arguendo, that Ross does have a one-half interest in the interface written by Wigginton, it does not follow that Ross is a joint author of the Full Impact program because its interface is derived from his and Wigginton's joint work. The Second Circuit's decision in Weissmann v. Freeman, 868 F.2d 1313 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 110 S.Ct. 219, 107 L.Ed.2d 172 (1989), is a clear refutation of this position. Joint authorship in a prior work is insufficient to make one a joint author of a derivative work: "[i]f such were the law, it would eviscerate the independent copyright protection that attaches to a derivative work that is wholly independent of the protection afforded the prexisting work." Id. at 1317. The analysis in Weissmann is sound, and we adopt its reasoning on this point.
Interestingly, the court in Weissmann also discussed the situation where a joint work is utilized or licensed for use in a derivative work by one of the co-authors of the joint work. In such a situation, no cause of action for infringement exists, "because an individual cannot infringe his own copyright. The only duty joint owners have . . . is to account for profits from [the joint work's] use." Id. at 1318.
This circuit made a similar ruling in Oddo v. Ries, 743 F.2d 630 (9th Cir. 1984). There a co-owner of a copyright in an unpublished guide book had infringed the other co-owner's copyright by publishing a revised and expanded guide book that used much of the original unpublished one. We held that a co-owner cannot be liable for infringement of the copyright, and that each author has the independent right to use or license the copyright subject only to a duty to account for any profits he earns from the licensing or use of the copyright. Id. at 633. The duty to account for profits for use or licensing a joint work does not derive from the copyright law's proscription of infringement but it stems from equitable doctrines relating to unjust enrichment and general principles of law governing the rights of co-owners. Id.
We wish to clarify, however, the district court's statement that "[b]ecause Ross only contributed ideas to the Full Impact interface, . . . the program is not a `joint work' between Ross and Wigginton." 728 F. Supp. at 602. While the court was correct to hold that the user interface is not a "joint work" as a result of Ross's contribution to the interface itself, the court did not resolve whether Ross's copyrightable contribution to the engine of the MacCalc engine entitled him to an undivided interest in the entire prototype, including the interface. We do not decide this question either, because it is unnecessary to the resolution of this appeal.
In its order granting Ashton-Tate's summary judgment motion, the district court ruled that Appellants' trade secret claims were time-barred under the applicable statute of limitation. The court also expressed its belief that the alleged trade secrets were not actually trade secrets at all, but it did not make a ruling on this point. 728 F. Supp. at 603 fn. 2. We agree with the district court that Appellants' trade secret claims were time-barred.
There is agreement that Cal.Civ.Code § 3426.6 contains the applicable statute of limitation. It reads:
Cal.Civ.Code § 3426.6 (1989). "Misappropriation" is defined in a separate section of California's trade secret laws as:
Cal.Civ.Code § 3426.1 (1989).
The district court cited Whittaker Corp. v. ExecuAir Corp., 736 F.2d 1341 (1984), to support its view of when the "misappropriation" occurred and the limitation period started to run. ExecuAir held that the misappropriation claims in that case accrued when the alleged owner of the trade secrets became aware of the third party's (ExecuAir) acquisition of those secrets. Id. at 1345. While ExecuAir came down prior to California's adoption of the UTSA, we think it expresses the rule intended by Cal. Civ.Code § 3426.6. See Milgrim, Milgrim on Trade Secrets, § 7.04[2] fn. 14.1. We also find Appellants' estoppel claims meritless. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's well reasoned ruling on the trade secret claims.
noting that "the process of evaluating a summary judgment motion would be flouted if requests for more time, discovery, or the introduction of supplemental affidavits had to be considered even if requested well after the deadline set for the introduction of all information needed to make a ruling has passed."
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