Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/351/570
Timestamp: 2018-01-23 12:23:42
Document Index: 374496174

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 24', '§ 4954', '§ 23', '§ 24', '§ 23', '§ 24', '§ 24', '§ 24', '§ 24', '§ 255', '§ 230', '§ 24', '§ 761']

Marie DE SYLVA, Petitioner, v. Marie BALLENTINE, as Guardian of the Estate of Stephen William Ballentine. | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
351 U.S. 570 (76 S.Ct. 974, 100 L.Ed. 1415)
Argued: April 25, 1956.
The present Copyright Act 1 provides for a second 28-year copyright after the expiration of the original 28-year term, if application for renewal is made within one year before the expiration of the original term. This right to renew the copyright appears in § 24 of the Act:
This section became § 4954 of the Revised Statutes, and was amended in 1891, 26 Stat. 1107, by deleting the requirement that the author be a citizen or resident of the United States. The section was otherwise left intact. The present renewal provision appeared first as § 23 of the Copyright Act of March 4, 1909, 35 Stat. 1080, and was continued without change in 17 U.S.C. 24, 17 U.S.C.A. § 24.
Knowing, as we do, that 'or' can be ambiguous when used in such a context as this, it is difficult to say that the change made in the 1870 Copyright Act had the effect of changing, as petitioner contends it did, the children's interest from an interest shared with the widow to one which became effective only after her death. There is no legislative history, either when the 1870 Act was passed or in the subsequent sessions of Congress, to indicate that Congress in fact intended to change in this respect the existing scheme of distribution of the renewal rights. Rather, what scant material there is indicates that no substantial changes in the Act were intended. 2 It would not seem unlikely that the framers of the 1870 statute, interested in compressing the somewhat cumbersome phrasing of the prior Copyright Act, simply deleted the words 'and child' with the thought that the remaining phrase 'or children' expressed precisely the same result, leaving unaffected the rights of the author's children which had been the same for almost forty years.
We then come to the 1909 Copyright Act. By § 23 of that Act, now 17 U.S.C. 24, 17 U.S.C.A. § 24, there were added to those entitled to renewal rights after the author's deaththe widow or childrenthe author's executors, or, in the absence of a will, his next of kin. Each of these named classes is separated in the statute by a condition precedent to the passing of the renewal rights, namely, that the persons named in the preceding class be deceased. As already noted, it is at least clear that, if the author and his widow have both died, survived by a child, that child is entitled to renew copyrights maturing during his lifetime. But if this interest were to take effect only after the death of the widow, it might be expected that the drafters of the Act would have separated 'widow or widower' from 'children' with the same condition precedent used in defining the succession of the other classes to the renewal rights, since it would in effect be placing the children in a class lower than that occupied by the widow or widower. Granting that the absence of this structure might simply have been due to carelessness in adding the new class to the prior renewal section, we think it may nevertheless be taken as some indication that the widow and children are to take the right to renew at the same time.
The Solicitor General has filed a helpful brief on behalf of the Register of Copyrights, as amicus curiae, in which the administrative practice of the Copyright Office is discussed. It appears that the Regulations issued under the 1909 Act, in force until 1948 (when new Regulations, not touching on this point, were issued), allowed the children of the author to apply for copyright renewals after the author's death along with the widow or widower that is, the children were not treated as being entitled to renewal only after the death of the widow or widower. 3 The practice of the Copyright Office has been to register renewal claims by children during the lifetime of an author's widow or widower, although this practice, it is frankly admitted, is more the result of a decision that there is substantial doubt over the question, rather than the result of a confident interpretation of the statute as treating widows, widowers, and children as members of one class. Although we would ordinarily give weight to the interpretation of an ambiguous statute by the agency charged with its administration, cf. Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 211213, 74 S.Ct. 460, 467468, 98 L.Ed. 630, we think the Copyright Office's explanation of its practice deprives the practice of any force as an interpretation of the statute, and we therefore do not rely on it in this instance.
Petitioner and several of the associations which have filed amicus briefs point out that the 'universal' interpretation of § 24 has been that children are entitled to renewal only after the death of the widow or widower. In light of the Copyright Office practice alone, that is obviously an overstatement. Nevertheless, had there been a long-standing consistent attitude by the specialists in this field of law, and a more adequate basis for it than exists here, we might hesitate to overturn what had come to be a generally accepted view of a statute having such important consequences. But we cannot escape the conclusion that, in this instance, any such reliance on that interpretation of the Act was misplaced: the statute is far from clear, the Copyright Office has recognized its ambiguity, renewal applications have for many years been filed by children before the death of the widow or widower, and more than one qualified commentator has either expressed doubt on the question or has concluded that the widow or widower and children take as a class. 4
Nor is it possible for us to say, as petitioner suggests, that the only way to satisfy the congressional purpose is to hold that, during her lifetime, the widow has exclusive renewal rights. Petitioner argues that the statute, contemplating the normal situation of a widow taking care of her children, gives the widow exclusive control of the copyright on the author's death, since she is presumably more capable of dealing with it and will more likely be in need of the copyright income. This branch of the argument, however, becomes very much diluted when it is observed that, if the deceased author be a woman, the statute disposes of the renewal rights in the same manner as if the author were a male. It is further argued that since the value of the copyright depends to an appreciable extent on the ability to convey clear publication rights, the statute should not be construed to diminish the value of the copyright by scattering its ownership, which might make it difficult to transfer clear title. One difficulty with this argument is that it ignores the 1831 statute, which, as petitioner recognizes, divided the ownership of the renewal rights between the surviving spouse of the author and his children. What we are asked to do is to avoid, on policy grounds, an interpretation of the successor statute which embodies the policy of the earlier Act, a policy which Congress saw fit to effectuate at least until 1870, and which, if changed then, was changed without any discernible display of dissatisfaction with that policy. This is not the type of case where we can use, as a guide to statutory interpretation, an unwillingness to attribute to Congress results which on their face are harsh, or present constitutional difficulties, or which are so extraordinary that clear, unambiguous wording is required. Cf. United States v. Minker, 350 U.S. 179, 76 S.Ct. 281. In view of this explicit prior legislation, this Court should not transfuse the successor statute with a gloss of its own choosing, especially where the choice between the alternative policies is as close as this one. 5
We come, then, to the question of whether an illegitimate child is included within the term 'children' as used in § 24. The scope of a federal right is, of course, a federal question, but that does not mean that its content is not to be determined by state, rather than federal law. Cf. Reconstruction Finance Corp. v. Beaver County, 328 U.S. 204, 66 S.Ct. 992, 90 L.Ed. 1172; Board of County Commissioners v. United States, 308 U.S. 343, 351352, 60 S.Ct. 285, 288289, 84 L.Ed. 313. This is especially true where a statute deals with a familial relationship; there is no federal law of domestic relations, which is primarily a matter of state concern.
If we look at the other persons who, under this section of the Copyright Act, are entitled to renew the copyright after the author's death, it is apparent that this is the general scheme of the statute. To decide who is the widow or widower of a deceased author, or who are his executors or next of kin, requires a reference to the law of the State which created those legal relationships. The word 'children,' although it to some extent describes a purely physical relationship, also describes a legal status not unlike the others. To determine whether a child has been legally adopted, for example, requires a reference to state law. We think it proper, therefore, to draw on the ready-made body of state law to define the word 'children' in § 24. This does not mean that a State would be entitled to use the word 'children' in a way entirely strange to those familiar with its ordinary usage, but at least to the extent that there are permissible variations in the ordinary concept of 'children' we deen state law controlling. Cf. Seaboard Air Line Railway v. Kenney, 240 U.S. 489, 36 S.Ct. 458, 60 L.Ed. 762. 6
This raises two questions: first, to what State do we look, and second, given a particular State, what part of that State's law defines the relationship. The answer to the first question, in this case, is not difficult, since it appears from the record that the only State concerned is California, and both parties have argued the case on that assumption. The second question, however, is less clear. An illegitimate child who is acknowledged by his father, by a writing signed in the presence of a witness, is entitled under § 255 of the California Probate Code 7 to inherit his father's estate as well as his mother's. The District Court found that the child here was within the terms of that section. Under California law the child is not legitimate for all purposes, however; compliance with § 230 of the Civil Code 8 is necessary for full legitimation, and there are no allegations in the complaint sufficient to bring the child within the section. Hence, we may take it that the child is not 'adopted' in the sense that he is to be regarded as a legitimate child of the author.
The meaning of the word 'children' as used in § 24 of the Copyright Act is a federal question. Congress could of course give the word the meaning it has under the laws of the several States. See Hutchinson Investment Co. v. Caldwell, 152 U.S. 65, 6869, 14 S.Ct. 504, 505; Poff v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 327 U.S. 399, 401, 66 S.Ct. 603, 90 L.Ed. 749. But I would think the statutory policy of protecting dependents would be better served by uniformity, rather than by the diversity which would flow from incorporating into the Act the laws of forty-eight States. Cf. Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States, 318 U.S. 363, 367, 63 S.Ct. 573, 575, 87 L.Ed. 838; National Metropolitan Bank v. United States, 323 U.S. 454, 456, 65 S.Ct. 354, 355, 89 L.Ed. 383; Heiser v. Woodruff, 327 U.S. 726, 732, 66 S.Ct. 853, 855, 90 L.Ed. 970; United States v. Standard Oil Co., 332 U.S. 301, 307, 67 S.Ct. 1604, 91 L.Ed. 2067.
An illegitimate child was given the benefits of the Federal Death Act, 46 U.S.C.A. § 761 et seq., by Middleton v. Luckenbach S.S. Co., 70 F.2d 326, 329330, where the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said:
61 Stat. 652, 17 U.S.C. 1 et seq., 17
See, e.g., Chafee, Reflections on the Law of Copyright, 45 Col.L.Rev. 503, 527; Kupferman, Renewal of CopyrightSection 23 of the Copyright Act of 1909, 44 Col.L.Rev. 712, 717; Tannenbaum, Practical Problems in Copyright, 7 Copyright Problems Analyzed (CCH) 7, 12 (1952). But see, e.g., Nicholson, A Manual of Copyright Practice, 195, 196; De Wolf, An Outline of Copyright Law, 66.