Source: http://www.hyperlaw.com/westlit/litdocs/1998-11-03-second-circuit-opinion-citation-HLvWest-97-74301.html
Timestamp: 2020-02-21 12:38:19
Document Index: 210165937

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 101', '§ 107', '§ 107', '§ 107', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§101', '§ 101', '§ 101', '§ 101', 'art, 977', '§ 101', '§6', '§ 6', '§106', '§101']

Second Circuit Star Pagination Opinion
Matthew Bender & Co. v. West Publishing Co., 158 F.3d 693 (2d Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1154 (1999)
West creates "case reports" of judicial opinions by combining (i) certain independently authored features, such as syllabi (which summarize each opinion's general holdings), headnotes (which summarize the specific points of law recited in each opinion), and key numbers (which categorize the points of law into different legal topics and subtopics), with (ii) the text of the opinions, to which West adds parallel citations to other reporters, information about the lawyers, and other miscellaneous enhancements. West then publishes these case reports (first in paperbacked advance sheets, and then in hardbound volumes) in various series of "case reporters." These case reporters are collectively known as West's "National Reporter System," and include (as relevant to this case): the Supreme Court Reporter, which contains all Supreme Court opinions and memorandum decisions; the Federal Reporter, which contains all federal court of appeals opinions designated for publication, as well as tables documenting the disposition of cases that are unpublished; the Federal Rules Decisions and Federal Supplement, which contain selected federal district court opinions; and the New York Supplement, which contains selected New York State case reports. Cases appearing in West's case reporters are universally cited by the volume and page number of the case reporter series in which they appear. One citation guide recommends--and some courts require--citation to the West version of federal appellate and trial court decisions and New York State court decisions. See The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation at 165-67, 200-01 (16th ed. 1996); see, e.g., Third Cir. R. 28.3(a); Eleventh Cir. R. 28-2(k); see also The University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation 15 (1989) ("When citing to a state case, indicate the volume and first page of the case for both the official and commercial reporters.").
Bender markets a series of CD-ROM discs called Authority from Matthew Bender. One product in this series--the "New York product"--consists of three elements: (i) "New York Law and Practice" (one disc), which contains New York statutory and treatise materials; (ii) "New York Federal Cases" (three discs), which contains cases from the Second Circuit and New York's federal district courts from 1789 to the present; and (iii) "New York State Cases" (four discs), which contains New York State judicial opinions from 1912 to the present (the New York State Court of Appeals cases begin in 1884). These CD-ROM discs contain published opinions and unpublished opinions and orders from these courts.
West claims (and for the purposes of this summary judgment motion, we accept as true) that the FOLIO retrieval system permits a user of Bender's product to view (and print) judicial opinions in the same order in which they are printed in a West volume by repeating the following steps: (i) a user activates the jump feature in the program to go to the first page in a West case reporter volume, (ii) pages through to the bottom of the case, (iii) finds the last star pagination reference, and (iv) activates the jump cite feature to retrieve the case beginning on the same or next West page number.
HyperLaw markets Supreme Court on Disc, an annual CD-ROM disc containing opinions of the United States Supreme Court since 1991, and Federal Appeals on Disc, a quarterly CD-ROM disc containing nearly all opinions (published and unpublished) of the federal courts of appeals since January 1993. HyperLaw currently obtains the text of its opinions directly from the courts and includes in its Federal Appeals CD-ROM disc many more cases than published by West. The opinions are organized on the CD-ROM disc in an order that is "approximately chronological." HyperLaw includes parallel citations to West's case reporters for all cases appearing in the Supreme Court Reporter and the Federal Reporter, and intends to add star pagination as well.
However, as is clear from the second Feist element, copyright protection in compilations "may extend only to those components of a work that are original to the author." Id. at 348, 111 S. Ct. at 1289. The "originality" requirement encompasses requirements both "that the work was independently created . . ., and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity." Id. at 345, 111 S. Ct. at 1287 (emphasis added); see also Key Publications, Inc. v. Chinatown Today Publ'g Enters., Inc., 945 F.2d 509, 512-13 (2d Cir. 1991) ("Simply stated, original means not copied, and exhibiting a minimal amount of creativity."). At issue here are references to West's volume and page numbers distributed through the text of plaintiffs' versions of judicial opinions. West concedes that the pagination of its volumes--i.e., the insertion of page breaks and the assignment of page numbers--is determined by an automatic computer program, and West does not seriously claim that there is anything original or creative in that process. As Judge Martin noted, "where and on what particular pages the text of a court opinion appears does not embody any original creation of the compiler." Because the internal pagination of West's case reporters does not entail even a modicum of creativity, the volume and page numbers are not original components of West's compilations and are not themselves protected by West's compilation copyright. See Feist, 499 U.S. at 363, 111 S. Ct. at 1297 ("As a constitutional matter, copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity.").
Because the volume and page numbers are unprotected features of West's compilation process, they may be copied without infringing West's copyright. However, West proffers an alternative argument based on the fact (which West has plausibly demonstrated) that plaintiffs have inserted or will insert all of West's volume and page numbers for certain case reporters. West's alternative argument is that even though the page numbering is not (by itself) a protectable element of West's compilation, (i) plaintiffs' star pagination to West's case reporters embeds West's arrangement of cases in plaintiffs' CD-ROM discs, thereby allowing a user to perceive West's protected arrangement through the plaintiffs' file-retrieval programs, and (ii) that under the Copyright Act's definition of "copies," 17 U.S.C. § 101, a work that allows the perception of a protectable element of a compilation through the aid of a machine amounts to a copy of the compilation. We reject this argument for two separate reasons.
West concedes that insertion of parallel citations (identifying the volume and first page numbers on which a particular case appears) to West's case reporters in plaintiffs' products (as well as any other compilations of judicial opinions) is permissible under the fair use doctrine. See West Reply Brief at 5 n.5 (noting "West's long-held position that parallel citation to West case reports by competitors (without additional star pagination) is a fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107--i.e., an otherwise infringing use that, when analyzed under the § 107 factors, is deemed `fair'"); West's Response to Bender's Rule 3(g) Statement ¶ 32, Joint Appendix at 1581; see also West Publ'g Co. v. Mead Data Central, Inc., 799 F.2d 1219, 1222 (8th Cir. 1986) ("West concedes that citation to the first page of its reports is a noninfringing `fair use' under 17 U.S.C. § 107."). West admitted at oral argument (as it did in the district court) that these parallel citations already allow a user of plaintiffs' CD-ROM discs to perceive West's arrangement with the aid of a machine and that plaintiffs' CD-ROM discs therefore already have created a lawful "copy" of West's arrangement on their CD-ROM discs--as West defines "copy."
The opposite conclusion was reached by the district court in Oasis Publishing Co. v. West Publishing Co., 924 F. Supp. 918 (D. Minn. 1996), which reasoned that the fair-use copying of parallel citation, which could be used to perceive the arrangement of cases, did not excuse copying interior pagination, which could also be used to perceive arrangement. See id. at 926. It is true that copying under the fair use doctrine will not necessarily permit additional uses, and will not excuse additional copying that in the aggregate amounts to infringement. But a compilation has limited protectability; only the original elements of a compilation (i.e., its selection, arrangement, and coordination) are protected from copying. The insertion of parallel citations already creates a "copy" of West's arrangement (at least as West defines a copy), a copy that is permissible under the fair use doctrine. Star pagination cannot be said to create another copy of the same arrangement. Prohibiting star pagination would simply allow West to protect unoriginal elements of its compilation that have assumed importance and value. Accordingly, even were we to agree with West's interpretation of the Copyright Act, we would not find infringement.
17 U.S.C. § 101. "A work is `fixed' in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy . . . is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration." Id. (emphasis added).
The Copyright Act establishes a "fundamental distinction" between the original work of authorship and the material object in which that work is "fixed." See supra note 9. The sole purpose of § 101's definitions of the words "copies" and "fixed" is to explicate the "fixation" requirement, i.e., to define the material objects in which copyrightable and infringing works may be embedded and to describe the requisite fixed nature of that work within the material object. See 1 William F. Patry, Copyright Law and Practice 168 (1994) ("The two essential criteria of statutory copyright are originality and fixation."); id. at 174 (noting that the definition of "copies" is "intended to `comprise all the material objects in which copyrightable objects are capable of being fixed'"). Under § 101's definition of "copies," a work satisfies the fixation requirement when it is fixed in a material object from which it can be perceived or communicated directly or with the aid of a machine.
This definition was intended to avoid the distinctions "derived from cases such as White-Smith Publishing Co. v. Apollo Co., 209 U.S. 1[, 28 S. Ct. 319] (1908), under which statutory copyrightability in certain cases [had] been made to depend upon the form or medium in which the work is fixed." H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 52 (1976), reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5659, 5665; see also S. Rep. No. 94-473, at 51 (1975). In White-Smith, the Supreme Court held that a piano roll did not infringe the copyrighted music it played because its perforations were unintelligible to the eye and therefore did not amount to a "copy" of the music (which the Court defined as "`a written or printed record of [the musical composition] in intelligible notation'"). See White-Smith Publ'g Co., 209 U.S. at 17, 28 S.Ct. at 323. There was no question in that case that the work embodied in the piano roll reproduced the original work of authorship, i.e., the piece of music; the only question was whether this reproduction met the "fixation" requirement. Thus, the definition of "copies" is intended to expand the "fixation" requirement to include material objects that embody works capable of being perceived with the aid of a machine, thereby ensuring that reproductions of copyrighted works contained on media such as floppy disks, hard drives, and magnetic tapes would meet the Copyright Act's "fixation" requirement.
West cites no case which supports its interpretation of §101's definition of "copies," and every case we have found has relied upon the definition solely to ascertain whether a work has met the fixation requirement, not to determine the arrangements and rearrangements of the work fixed on the material object. See, e.g., Stenograph L.L.C. v. Bossard Assocs., Inc., 144 F.3d 96, 100 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (citing § 101's definition of "copies" to "support the proposition that the installation of software onto a computer results in `copying' within the meaning of the Copyright Act"); Stern Elecs., Inc. v. Kaufman, 669 F.2d 852, 856 (2d Cir. 1982) (using § 101's definition of "copies" to determine whether an audiovisual work met the "fixation" requirement); Sega Enters. Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 785 F. Supp. 1392, 1396 (N.D. Cal.) (using § 101 to determine whether an intermediate copy was actionable and noting substantial similarity between intermediate copy and allegedly infringed work as the test for determining whether intermediate copy was reproduction of copyrighted work), aff'd in part and rev'd in part, 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992).
The Supreme Court in Feist emphasized that copyright protection for a factual compilation is "thin," and that a compilation containing the same facts or non-copyrightable elements will not infringe unless it "feature[s] the same selection and arrangement" as the original compilation. Feist, 499 U.S. at 349, 111 S. Ct. at 1289 (emphasis added); see also Key Publications, Inc. v. Chinatown Today Publ'g Enters., Inc., 945 F.2d 509, 514 (2d Cir. 1991) (holding that to establish infringement, a compilation copyright holder must demonstrate "substantial similarity between those elements, and only those elements, that provide copyrightability to the allegedly infringed compilation"). To determine whether two works contain a substantially similar arrangement, courts compare the ordering of material in the two works, finding infringement only when both compilations have featured a very similar literal ordering or format. See, e.g., Lipton v. Nature Co., 71 F.3d 464, 472 (2d Cir. 1995) (finding infringement of arrangement when of 25 terms contained in copyrighted work, 21 are listed in same order on allegedly infringing work); Worth v. Selchow & Righter Co., 827 F.2d 569, 573 (9th Cir. 1987) (holding that alphabetical arrangement of factual entries in a trivia encyclopedia was not copied by a copyrighted game that organized the factual entries by subject matter and random arrangement on game cards); see also Jane C. Ginsburg, No "Sweat"? Copyright and Other Protection of Works of Information After Feist v. Rural Telephone, 92 Colum. L. Rev. 338, 349 (1992) (noting that under Feist, nothing "short of extensive verbatim copying" will amount to infringement of a compilation). "If the similarity concerns only noncopyrightable elements of [a copyright holder's] work, or no reasonable trier of fact could find the works substantially similar, summary judgment is appropriate." Williams v. Crichton, 84 F.3d 581, 587 (2d Cir. 1996) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). We agree with plaintiffs and amicus United States that West fails to demonstrate the requisite substantial similarity. West's case reporters contain many fewer cases than plaintiffs' CD-ROM discs, and are arranged according to classification such as court, date, and genre (opinions, per curiam opinions, orders, etc.), subject to certain exceptions characterized by West as features of originality, whereas plaintiffs organize their cases simply by court and date. Comparison of the works reveals that cases that appear adjacent in the West case reporters are separated on plaintiffs' products by many other cases; and even if these other cases are disregarded, the West cases included on plaintiffs' products are not in an order at all resembling West's arrangement.
True, CD-ROM technology is different from paper, for as West points out, the arrangement of judicial opinions in a CD-ROM disc does not correspond necessarily to how the information will be displayed or printed by the user, because the file-retrieval system allows users to retrieve cases in a variety of ways. See Robert C. Denicola, Copyright in Collections of Facts: A Theory for the Protection of Nonfiction Literary Works, 81 Colum. L. Rev. 516, 531 (1981) ("[I]t is often senseless to seek in [electronic databases] a specific, fixed arrangement of data."). But having rejected West's argument under § 101, we can conclude that the arrangement of plaintiffs' work is the sequence of cases as embedded on the plaintiffs' CD-ROM discs and as displayed to the user browsing through plaintiffs' products. That sequence is not substantially similar to West's case reporters. There is no evidence that Bender and HyperLaw's case-retrieval systems allow a user to browse the cases in the West arrangement without first taking steps to create that arrangement. Thus, an actionable copy of West's sequence of cases, i.e., a work with a substantially similar arrangement fixed in a tangible medium (probably a print-out of the cases), could be created by a user of the CD-ROM discs, but only by using the file-retrieval program as electronic scissors. We cannot find that plaintiffs' products directly infringe West's copyright by inserting star pagination to West's case reporters.
Notwithstanding the absence of substantial similarity, a database manufacturer may be liable as a contributory infringer (in certain circumstances) for creating a product that assists a user to infringe a copyright directly. West has hypothesized that users of Bender and HyperLaw's products, using star pagination and the search functions of the CD-ROM products, will retrieve and print cases in the order in which they appear in West's case reporters. See Affidavit of Michael A. Trittipo ¶ 5, Joint Appendix at 1287. A CD-ROM disc user who replicated the West compilation in that way would be an infringer. But West has failed to identify any primary infringer, other than Mr. Trittipo, West's counsel. See Cable/Home Communication Corp. v. Networks Prods., Inc., 902 F.2d 829, 845 (11th Cir. 1990) ("Contributory infringement necessarily must follow a finding of direct or primary infringement."); 2 Paul Goldstein, Copyright §6.0 (1996) ("For a defendant to be held contributorily or vicariously liable, a direct infringement must have occurred.").
Assuming there is a class of primary infringers, then a party "who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes, or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another, may be held liable as a `contributory' infringer." See Gershwin Publ'g Corp. v. Columbia Artists Management, Inc., 443 F.2d 1159, 1162 (2d Cir. 1971). Two types of activities that lead to contributory liability are: (i) personal conduct that encourages or assists the infringement; and (ii) provision of machinery or goods that facilitate the infringement. See ITSI T.V. Prods., Inc. v. California Auth. of Racing Fairs, 785 F.Supp. 854, 861 n.13 (E.D. Cal. 1992). West argues that Bender and HyperLaw's sale of their CD-ROM products falls within the second category.
The arrangement of cases in the West case reporters, however meticulous and thoughtful, is of small assistance to the primary use of these products--searching for cases, and retrieval. After all, the useful order of access is almost always determined by the research goal of each user rather than the publisher's sequencing (a compilation of law cases being not much like a musical medley or a sonnet sequence). And the primary use of West's pagination in plaintiffs' products is to allow the user to refer to the location of a particular text within the West case reporters as has become standard practice in the legal community. West concedes that use of its volume and page numbers for pinpoint citation purposes is at least a fair use (if it even amounts to actionable copying). There is no evidence that plaintiffs have encouraged the users of their products to reproduce West's arrangement. In fact, the CD-ROM products provide no easy means for using the star pagination to create a substantially similar arrangement; a user must retrieve each case, one at a time, in the order in which they appear in the West volume, and then print each one. What customer would want to perform this thankless toil? We conclude that plaintiffs' products have substantial, if not overwhelming, noninfringing uses, and that the plaintiffs are not liable as contributory infringers.
West distinguishes Sony on the ground that that case involved a neutral "staple article of commerce" (a video tape recorder) which "is sold without reference, connection, or linkage to any copyrighted work," while plaintiffs' CD-ROM discs "contain . . . exact copies of West's proprietary arrangements permanently embedded within its database." This argument bespeaks direct infringement (a claim we have already rejected for other reasons) rather than contributory infringement. In any event, we think the "substantial noninfringing use" test is as applicable here as it was in Sony. The Supreme Court applied that test to prevent copyright holders from leveraging the copyrights in their original work to control distribution of (and obtain royalties from) products that might be used incidentally for infringement, but that had substantial noninfringing uses. See Sony, 464 U.S. at 440-42, 104 S. Ct. at 788-89; see also 2 Goldstein, supra § 6.1.2 ("To hold that the distribution of such materials or equipment constitutes contributory infringement, and thus to bring them within the scope of the copyright owner's control, may enable the copyright owner to influence the price and availability of goods that are not directly connected to its copyrighted work."). The same rationale applies here: West has a thin copyright in its compilations, which it seeks to leverage to protect its pagination (an element of its compilation that is unprotected altogether) and thereby to foreclose (or draw royalties from) CD-ROM products that might be used incidentally to replicate West's arrangement of cases, but that have substantial, predominant and noninfringing uses as tools for research and citation.
At bottom, West Publishing Co. rests upon the now defunct "sweat of the brow" doctrine. That court found that LEXIS had infringed West's copyright simply because it supplanted much of the need for West's case reporters through wholesale appropriation of West's page numbers. In reaching this conclusion, the court (i) noted that LEXIS's appropriation would deprive West of a large part of what it "[had] spent so much labor and industry in compiling," West Publ'g Co., 799 F.2d at 1227, and (ii) cited Hutchinson Telephone v. Fronteer Directory Co., 770 F.2d 128 (8th Cir. 1985), see West Publ'g Co., 799 F.2d at 1228, which in turn relied on Leon v. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., 91 F.2d 484 (9th Cir. 1937), and Jeweler's Circular Publishing Co v. Keystone Publishing Co., 281 F. 83 (2d Cir. 1922)--classic "sweat of the brow" cases that were overruled in Feist. Thus, the Eighth Circuit in West Publishing Co. erroneously protected West's industrious collection rather than its original creation. Because Feist undermines the reasoning of West Publishing Co., see United States v. Thomson Corp., 949 F.Supp. 907, 926 (D.D.C. 1996), we decline to follow it.
The West page numbers which are inserted by appellee Bender in the text of each of its CD-ROM disks by star pagination result from the totality of the West compilation process which includes its concededly original and copyrightable work, i.e. attorney description, headnotes, method of citation and emending of parallel or alternate citations. These result in a compilation work with page numbers assigned mechanically. The West page numbers and the corresponding Bender and Hyperlaw star pagination are the keys which open the door to the entire West citation system which as the majority noted is an accepted, and in some instances, a required element for the citation of authorities.
This reasoning is consistent with Feist. As discussed above, the majority notes that the compiler's copyright is "thin." Feist, 499 U.S. 340 at 350-51. Therefore, "a subsequent compiler remains free to use the facts contained in another's publication to aid in preparing a competing work, so long as the competing work does not feature the same selection and arrangement." Id., at 349 (emphasis added). In this case, allowing plaintiffs to use the page numbers contained in West's publication enables them to feature West's same selection and arrangement. Indeed, were it not for the ability to reproduce West's arrangement, its pagination would be of limited (if any) use.
West's position is that plaintiffs directly infringe. "[T]he owner of a copyright . . . has the exclusive rights to . . . reproduce the copyrighted work in copies." 17 U.S.C. §106. The reproduction must be in a "material object . . . in which a work is fixed . . . from which the work can be perceived . . . either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." 17 U.S.C. §101 (definition of "Copies"). Closely read, the word "work" in the statutory text refers in the first instance to the infringing work, and in the second instance to the infringed work. Accordingly, plaintiffs' CD-ROMs infringe West's reproduction right if the information is "fixed" in the CD-ROM (which it is) and if West's protected selection and arrangement "can be perceived . . . with the aid of a machine."
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Opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Affirming Decision of the District Court Rejecting Copyright of Citation/Star-Pagination November 3, 1998
The Second Circuit affirmed a summary order dated March 12, 1997 concerning a bench opinion of November 22, 1996 granting summary judgment on citation issue to Matthew Bender and HyperLaw dated November 22, 1996.
Unlike Matthew Bender, HyperLaw CD-Rom product included all opinions published in the Federal Reporter as well as unpublished opinions. Thus HyperLaw was publishing a super-set of the West versions. It was not possible on the HyperLaw CD-Rom to present the cases in the order of the West volumes. This was of relevance to the court.