Source: https://casetext.com/case/eckes-v-card-prices-update
Timestamp: 2019-03-25 12:26:43
Document Index: 522006273

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 410', '§ 410', '§ 101', '§ 103', '§ 101', '§ 102', '§ 3', '§ 101', '§ 2', '§ 13']

Eckes v. Card Prices Update, 736 F.2d 859 | Casetext
Eckes v. Card Prices Update
736 F.2d 859 (2d Cir. 1984)
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Eckesv.Card Prices Update
United States Court of Appeals, Second CircuitJun 8, 1984
Herman Kaufman, New York City (Litman, Kaufman Asche, New York City, of counsel), for plaintiffs-appellants.
Before FEINBERG, Chief Judge, WINTER, Circuit Judge and LASKER, District Judge.
Honorable Morris E. Lasker, Senior United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, sitting by designation.
Dennis W. Eckes and James Beckett, III, appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, I. Leo Glasser, J., 575 F.Supp. 459 (E.D.N.Y. 1983), finding that appellee companies, Card Price Update and Suffolk Collectables, had not infringed appellants' soft-covered book, entitled the "Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide" (the Guide). Following a non-jury trial, the court found that while the Guide was protected by the copyright laws, appellants had failed to prove that appellees had copied from the Guide in putting together their work, entitled "Card Prices Update" (CPU). For the reasons stated below, we believe the court erred in concluding that there was no infringement, and we reverse the judgment of the district court.
In order to prove copyright infringement, appellants "must show ownership of a valid copyright and copying by the defendant." Novelty Textile Mills, Inc. v. Joan Fabric Corp., 558 F.2d 1090, 1092 (2d Cir. 1977). Appellants introduced into evidence a timely obtained Copyright Office certificate of registration, which "constitute[s] prima facie evidence of the validity of the copyright . . .," 17 U.S.C. § 410(c). Appellees claim that the presumption of validity was overcome because there were material omissions on appellants' application form submitted to the Copyright Office. In particular, appellees contend that appellants "failed or refused to complete" portions of the copyright registration form regarding their previous works: "Sport Americana Bicentennial Edition 1976" and "Sport Americana 1978 Edition." However, we agree with the district court's findings that the 1979 publication of the Guide represented a substantial change from the 1976 and 1978 publications. The latter consisted merely of baseball card set checklists; the Guide, on the other hand, was a more comprehensive listing, which assigned values for each card listed, depending on their condition. Also, the Guide classified the cards into two groups, those selling at only average prices (common cards) and those commanding higher than average prices (premium cards).
In addition, the court clearly and justifiably believed that appellants' omissions in the copyright application were inadvertent and innocent. Only the "knowing failure to advise the Copyright Office of facts which might have occasioned a rejection of the application constitute[s] reason for holding the registration invalid and thus incapable of supporting an infringement action . . . or denying enforcement on the ground of unclean hands. . . ." Russ Berrie Co., Inc. v. Jerry Elsner Co., Inc., 482 F.Supp. 980, 988 (S.D.N.Y. 1980) (citations omitted); see also Thomas Wilson Co. v. Irving J. Dorfman Co., 433 F.2d 409, 412 (2d Cir. 1970) (one error made in "good faith" and the other "clearly innocent" omission), cert. denied, 401 U.S. 977, 91 S.Ct. 1200, 28 L.Ed.2d 326 (1971); Advisors, Inc. v. Wiesen-Hart, Inc., 238 F.2d 706, 708 (6th Cir. 1956) (per curiam) ("an innocent misstatement . . . in the affidavit and certificate of registration, unaccompanied by fraud or intent to extend the statutory period of copyright protection, does not invalidate the copyright, nor is it thereby rendered incapable of supporting an infringement action"), cert. denied, 353 U.S. 949, 77 S.Ct. 861, 1 L.Ed.2d 858 (1957). Accordingly, we agree with the district court that the presumption of 17 U.S.C. § 410(c) was not overcome because of fraud.
Appellees next argue that the Guide cannot be protected under the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101 et seq. Appellees recognize, as they must, that compilations are specifically protected under the Act. Id. § 103. The Act defines a compilation as "a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." Id. § 101. Appellees contend, however, that copyright protection does not extend either to the idea of a baseball card compilation, id. § 102(b); Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 217-18, 74 S.Ct. 460, 470-71, 98 L.Ed. 630 (1954) (protection covers only expression of idea and not idea itself), or to facts and information contained in the compilation, cf. Harper Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 723 F.2d 195, 202-04 (2d Cir. 1983), cert. granted, ___ U.S. ___, 104 S.Ct. 2655, 81 L.Ed.2d 362 (1984); Hoehling v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 618 F.2d 972, 979 (2d Cir.), cert denied, 449 U.S. 841, 101 S.Ct. 121, 66 L.Ed.2d 49 (1980). Appellees contend that once the idea of a baseball card compilation and the facts contained in it are removed from the Guide, there is simply nothing left to protect, especially where the format is required by the nature of the subject matter.
Copyright law and compilations are uneasy bedfellows since "the very vocabulary of copyright law is ill suited to analyzing property rights in works of nonfiction." Denicola, Copyright in Collections of Facts: A Theory for Protection of Nonfiction Literary Works, 81 Colum.L.Rev., 516 (1981). Indeed, while this court has recognized that the "distinction between fact and expression is not always easy to draw," Harper Row Publishers, Inc., supra, 723 F.2d at 203, we have been particularly restrictive in the protection of non-fiction works indicating, for example, that the fruits of another's labor in lieu of independent research obtained through the sweat of a researcher's brow, does not merit copyright protection absent, perhaps, wholesale appropriation. See Hoehling, supra, 618 F.2d at 979; Rosemont Enterprises, Inc. v. Random House, Inc., 366 F.2d 303, 310 (2d Cir. 1966), cert. denied, 385 U.S. 1009, 87 S.Ct. 714, 17 L.Ed.2d 546 (1967); see also Miller v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 650 F.2d 1365, 1371-72 (5th Cir. 1981); 1 M. Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 3.04, at 3-16-16.1 (1983) (criticizing notion that fruits of original research are protectible but noting that original selection of public domain materials may itself be protectible). But see, e.g., Schroeder v. William Morrow Co., 566 F.2d 3, 6 (7th Cir. 1977); Rand McNally v. Fleet Management Systems, ___ F.Supp. ___, 2 Copyright L.Rep. (CCH) ¶ 25,624, at 18,804-06 (N.D.Ill. December 31, 1983); National Business Lists, Inc. v. Dunn Bradstreet, Inc., 552 F.Supp. 89, 91-95 (N.D.Ill. 1982).
Nevertheless, our cases do not hold that subjective selection and arrangement of information does not merit protection. In fact, the definition of a compilation in the Act, 17 U.S.C. § 101 (" selected, coordinated, or arranged") (emphasis added), the commentators, see, e.g., 1 M. Nimmer, supra, § 2.04[B], at 2-41-2 ("originality involved in the selection and/ or arrangement of such facts" protected literary work) (footnote omitted) (emphasis added); Denicola, supra, at 530 ("originality in plaintiff's selection or choice of data"; Denicola, however, believes that the labor in compiling facts is protected) (emphasis in original), and the cases, see, e.g., Roy Export Co. v. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., 672 F.2d 1095, 1103 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 826, 103 S.Ct. 60, 74 L.Ed.2d 63 (1982); Dow Jones Co. v. Board of Trade, 546 F.Supp. 113, 116 (S.D.N.Y. 1982), suggest that selectivity in including otherwise nonprotected information can be protected expression. In Roy Export, supra, the plaintiff's selection of unprotected Charlie Chaplin film clips constituted a protectible original creative work. Similarly, in Dow Jones Co., supra, the court found that plaintiff's "subjective judgment and selectivity involved in determining" which stocks it would list made the list a copyrightable compilation.
The remaining issue before us is whether the district court erred in finding that appellants had not proven that appellees copied appellants' selection of premium cards. We have held that in the absence of direct copying, "a plaintiff may prove copying by showing access and `substantial similarity' of the two works." Novelty Textile Mills, Inc., supra, 558 F.2d at 1092. There is no issue here as to access. Thus, if there are substantial similarities between appellants' and appellees' material, as there certainly are here, then "`the absence of any countervailing evidence of creation independent of the copyrighted source may well render clearly erroneous a finding that there was not copying.'" Id. at 1092 n. 2, quoting Roth Greeting Cards v. United Card Co., 429 F.2d 1106, 1110 (9th Cir. 1970).
There was a scarcity of credible, non-self-serving proof in the record of independent creation by appellees. Lewis testified that he did not copy from the Guide, but the district court justifiably found that appellees' testimony as to the source of its premium price list was "evasive." The list of 5,000 premium cards in both works is acknowledged to be substantially the same, and we believe that it was impossible for appellees to produce the same list without copying. Cf. Wainwright Securities, Inc. v. Wall Street Transcript Corp., 558 F.2d 91, 96 (2d Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1014, 98 S.Ct. 730, 54 L.Ed.2d 759 (1978) (almost wholesale verbatim appropriation of most original aspects — financial analysis and predictions — of plaintiff's work); Adventures in Good Eating v. Best Places to Eat, 131 F.2d 809, 811 (7th Cir. 1942) (defendant's claim that similarity in wording due to similarity in source not convincing since it would not explain "existence of such close and parallel wording, [or] . . . the substantially same selection of places listed in the respective books.") It is certainly true that some baseball cards would appear as premium on any baseball card collector's list; however, the choice as to many is necessarily subjectively based, for example, on regional differences. If there is one thing baseball fans would argue about, it is which players belong in the group of all-time best or most popular. Indeed, appellant Eckes testified that appellants often disagreed among themselves as to whether a given card was in the premium or common card category, and appellant Beckett testified that there was a similar divergence of opinion among the various dealers.
Moreover, while there may not have been direct testimony of copying, there was strong credible evidence of it, as noted above, through common errors in the two works. As noted by Professor Nimmer, "the courts have regarded the existence of common errors in two similar works as the strongest evidence of piracy. . . ." 3 M. Nimmer, supra, § 13.03[C], at 13.38.2-.3 (footnote omitted). See also College Entrance Book Co. v. Amsco Book Co., Inc., 119 F.2d 874, 875 (2d Cir. 1941). Here, there are numerous common errors. For example, the Price Guide inadvertently omitted from its 1963 Topps list the card for Bill Virdon, a rookie of the year in the mid-fifties and later a manager for the New York Yankees. It appears undisputed that the Virdon card would qualify as premium. Strikingly, the listing of the same set in CPU has the same omission despite the fact that CPU purports to list all premium cards. Similarly, there is an inexplicable identity between the Guide and CPU with respect to the particular manner in which the 1933 "Delong" set is checklisted. Although many of the listings of cards in the various series in the Guide contain the first and last name of the player listed, the Guide lists only the players' last names in the "Delong" series with two exceptions: "Lou Gehrig" and "W. Terry." The CPU "Delong" checklist matches this pattern completely; CPU's checklist, with the exception of "Lou Gehrig" and "W. Terry," uses the players' last names only. Further examples of indisputable copying abound in the record.
575 F.Supp. at 464. It may be that a copyrighted work, here a listing of premium cards, can be so successful that it establishes the "market," but there is no credible evidence in the record to support application of this theory here. Moreover, there is no basis for such an inference in light of the short time in this case between the issuance of appellants' Guide and appellees' CPU. In addition, this argument would best be advanced in a fair use context, that is, that it is necessary to copy the premium cards and prices from appellants' book because their book establishes which cards are premium and the respective prices of each card. Cf. Consumers Union of United States, Inc. v. General Signal Corp., 724 F.2d 1044, 1049-51 (2d Cir. 1983) (discussing fair use in primarily informational work), petition for cert. filed, 52 U.S.L.W. 3875 (U.S. June 5, 1984). However, appellees do not contend that they made fair use of the Guide; they claim that they did not copy from it at all. The judge's finding that they did not was clearly incorrect.