Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1304377.html
Timestamp: 2019-05-25 06:24:55
Document Index: 748459751

Matched Legal Cases: ['§\u2002101', '§\u20021338', '§\u20021291', '§\u20021', '§\u20027', '§\u20027']

TWIN BOOKS CORPORATION v. WALT DISNEY COMPANY | FindLaw
TWIN BOOKS CORPORATION v. WALT DISNEY COMPANY
TWIN BOOKS CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The WALT DISNEY COMPANY; Buena Vista Home Video, Inc.; and Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc., Defendants-Appellees.
No. 95-15250.
Before: BEEZER and HAWKINS, Circuit Judges, and QUACKENBUSH, Senior District Judge.* Joel Linzner,Ezra Hendon, and Lynn M. Humphreys, Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May, Oakland, California, for plaintiff-appellant. Timothy E. Carr, Carr & Mussman, San Francisco, California, for defendants-appellees.
Plaintiff Twin Books Corporation (Twin Books) appeals the district court's judgment granting the Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment in this action for copyright infringement brought pursuant to the Copyright Act of 1909, ch. 320, 35 Stat. 1075, current version at 17 U.S.C. §§ 101 et seq. The district court had original jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1338(a). We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We reverse and remand.
This appeal involves the children's classic tale, Bambi, A Life in the Woods. It is a very common misconception that Bambi was the brainchild of the world's foremost entertainer of children, Walt Disney. To the contrary, the young fawn named Bambi was brought to life in Austria by an Austrian citizen named Felix Salten, and was born in the wooded wilderness of Germany in 1923. Bambi learned very early in life that the meadow, where his mother took him to graze and play, was full of potential dangers everywhere he turned. Unfortunately, Bambi 's creator, Mr. Salten, could not know of the equally dangerous conditions lurking in the world of copyright protection under the United States Copyright Act of 1909, particularly as it pertained to Salten, a foreign author publishing his work in a foreign country.
1. The 1909 Copyright Act
It is undisputed that the 1909 Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §§ 1, et seq. (superseded 1976) applies in this case. Under the 1909 Act, an unpublished work was protected by state common law copyright from the moment of its creation until it was either published or until it received protection under the federal copyright scheme. Roy Export Co. Establishment of Vaduz, Liechtenstein v. Columbia Broadcasting Sys., Inc., 672 F.2d 1095, 1101 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 826, 103 S.Ct. 60, 74 L.Ed.2d 63 (1982). When a work was published for the first time, it lost state common law protection. The owner could, however, obtain federal protection for the published work by complying with the requirements of the 1909 Copyright Act. If the owner failed to satisfy the Act's requirements, the published work was interjected irrevocably into the public domain precluding any subsequent protection of the work under the 1909 Copyright Act. Id.
The 1909 Act provided that an author was entitled to 28 years of protection from the date he or she secured a copyright on a work, and that the copyright could, before the first 28-year period expired, be renewed for another 28-year term. Section 9 of the 1909 Act provided that the author of any work could secure a copyright for his work under the conditions and terms specified in the Act. Section 10 provided that “[a]ny person ․ may secure copyright for his work by publication thereof with the notice of copyright required by this title.” Section 19 set forth the specifications of a proper notice.
2. The 1923 Publication
The general rule under the 1909 Act is that a work must bear a valid copyright notice upon publication in order to secure copyright protection in the United States. Nimmer on Copyright § 7.02(C)(1). Under that rule, a publication of a work in the United States without the statutory notice of copyright fell into the public domain, precluding forever any subsequent copyright protection of the published work. See, e.g., LaCienega Music Co. v. ZZ Top, 53 F.3d 950 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 927, 116 S.Ct. 331, 133 L.Ed.2d 231 (1995).
[a] heatedly debated question and one which has never been finally settled by judicial determination, relates to the question of whether a work first published outside of the United States was required under the 1909 Act to bear a copyright notice in order to claim copyright protection within the United States.
Nimmer, at § 7.12(D)(2)(a).
The idea that United States copyright law should not be given extraterritorial effect had its origins in the case of United Dictionary Co. v. G. & C. Merriam Co., 208 U.S. 260, 28 S.Ct. 290, 52 L.Ed. 478 (1908). There, the Supreme Court looked at the copyright act that preceded the 1909 Act, and found that Congress did not intend the copyright laws to have extraterritorial effect. “Of course, Congress could attach what conditions it saw fit to its grant, but it is unlikely that it would make requirements of personal action beyond the sphere of its control.” Id. at 264, 28 S.Ct. at 290. A few years later, in Ferris v. Frohman, 223 U.S. 424, 32 S.Ct. 263, 56 L.Ed. 492 (1912), the Court applied the same territorial theory under the 1909 Copyright Act, holding that performance of a play in England did not alter that play's subsequent United States copyright status.
Many years later, in EEOC v. Arabian Am. Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 248, 111 S.Ct. 1227, 1230, 113 L.Ed.2d 274 (1991), the Supreme Court reminded us that “[i]t is a longstanding principle of American law ‘that legislation of Congress, unless a contrary intent appears, is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.’ ” Id. at 248, 111 S.Ct. at 1230 (citation omitted).
Such a requirement would achieve no practical purpose․ [T]he most practicable and, as we think, the correct interpretation, is that publication abroad will be in all cases enough, provided that, under the laws of the country where it takes place, it does not result in putting the work into the public domain. Assuming, arguendo, that plaintiff's publication in Hungary did not do so, it could not affect the [subsequent] American copyright that copies of his song were at any time sold there without any notice of the kind required by our statute, and it would therefore be of no significance, in its effect on the American copyright, if copies sold in Hungary bore a notice containing the wrong publication date.
More recently, this court reconfirmed that copyright laws have no extraterritorial operation in Subafilms Ltd. v. MGM-Pathe Communications Co., 24 F.3d 1088, 1095 (9th Cir.)(en banc, cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1001, 115 S.Ct. 512, 130 L.Ed.2d 419 (1994)). “The ‘undisputed axiom’ (citing Nimmer) ․ that the United States' copyright laws have no application to extraterritorial infringement predates the 1909 Act.” Id. (citing United Dictionary). Congressional enactment must be presumed to be primarily concerned with domestic conditions. “It is for Congress, and not the courts, to take the initiative in this [copyright] field.” Id. at 1098.
In Heim, as noted above, the court, applying the 1909 Act, opined that publication without a copyright notice in a foreign country did not put the work in the public domain in the United States, “provided that, under the laws of the country where it takes place, it does not result in putting the work in the public domain.” Heim, 154 F.2d at 487.
3. Commencement of the United States Copyright
Under the doctrine of territoriality, and under the clear language of the 1909 Copyright Act, United States copyright protection was not secured for Bambi until 1926, when in compliance with the Act's requirements, it was published with a United States copyright notice. During 1923, 1924, and 1925, anyone could have sold the Bambi book in the United States or made some derivative movie of the Bambi book, and the author Salten would have had no recourse under the United States copyright law. Nevertheless, the district court held that Bambi 's United States copyright term was running during the 1923-1926 years, when it was totally unprotected under United States copyright law. Such a result is neither warranted under the statute's language nor would it be fair to the owner of a subsequent United States copyright.
Disney is correct that publication in a foreign country with a notice of United States copyright secures United States copyright protection, and that a copyright thereby secured, endures for 28 years from the date it is first published with notice of United States copyright. In the 1909 Act, Congress offered foreign authors the same protection it offered American authors, but only upon compliance with the Act's formalities. However, Disney cites no authority, nor could it, for the proposition that publication abroad without notice of copyright secures protection under the 1909 Copyright Act. To the contrary, the clear language of section 10 of the 1909 Act provides that an author “may secure copyright for his work by publication thereof with the notice of copyright required by this title.” There is absolutely no way to interpret that language to mean that an author may secure copyright protection for his work by publishing it without any notice of copyright. Additionally, to so argue is a complete reversal of Disney's alternative argument that Bambi fell into the public domain in 1923 when it was published without the statutorily required notice of copyright.
4. Renewal of the Copyright