Opinion ID: 2817831
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Derivative Work

Text: Although in its summary judgment ruling the district court held that it was a genuine issue of material fact whether Treating Explosive Kids is a derivative work, the court modified its ruling shortly before trial. Accepting Ablon's argument that the book could not be both a joint work and a derivative work as a matter of law, and seeing no reason to disturb its earlier decision that Treating Explosive Kids was a joint work, the court ruled on publisher's (unkept) promise to register the copyright in the author's names [sic] -- the contract itself only concerns the relationship between the authors and the publisher, not the relationship between Greene and Ablon. For example, the contract details how royalties are to be divided between the publisher on one hand and the authors on the other, but not how the authors are to divide royalties. While one may infer from the contract that Greene and Ablon equally co-own the copyright, the joint work analysis unequivocally establishes that fact. Furthermore, the parties contest whether Treating Explosive Kids can be both joint and derivative as a matter of copyright law. Addressing the joint work question is a necessary predicate to that discussion. See infra Section II(D). -32- a motion in limine that the book could not be a derivative work as a matter of law.20 Greene argues that this ruling was erroneous and improperly circumscribed his case. He asserts that, if the derivative work question had gone to the jury, he would have sought to introduce into evidence an additional two dozen expressions showing that Ablon's PowerPoint slides infringed on expression that he alone owned in both books. Although Greene is correct that the district court's ruling was erroneous -- a work can be both joint and derivative -- he misunderstands the consequences of that error and has not shown that it affected the trial. A derivative work is a work based upon one or more preexisting works. 17 U.S.C. § 101. It consists of a contribution of original material to a pre-existing work so as to recast, transform or adapt the pre-existing work. Mass. Museum of Contemporary Art Found., Inc. v. Büchel, 593 F.3d 38, 64-65 (1st Cir. 2010) (quoting 1 Nimmer § 3.03[A]). Importantly, [t]he copyright in a . . . derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work . . . . 17 U.S.C. § 103(b). With respect to that preexisting work, [a]ny elements 20 Greene objects to the court modifying its summary judgment ruling on a motion in limine. Because we find the district court's legal conclusion erroneous in any event, we need not reach this procedural issue. -33- that the author of the derivative work borrowed from the underlying work . . . remain protected by the copyrights in the underlying work. Gamma Audio & Video, Inc. v. Ean-Chea, 11 F.3d 1106, 1112 (1st Cir. 1993). Greene maintains that, when a derivative work is created jointly, each co-author owns only the contributions he or she personally penned. However, nothing about the limited scope of a derivative work copyright upsets the ownership regime that normally arises when more than one author contributes to a work. When the authors of a derivative work are joint authors, they share equally in the copyright to the derivative work, regardless of who penned the new material. See 17 U.S.C. § 201(a). Thus, Greene has no greater claim than Ablon to any of the original expression in Treating Explosive Kids, and he cannot claim copyright infringement on the basis of Ablon's use of that original expression in his PowerPoint slides. We do have the fact here that an author of the joint work, Treating Explosive Kids, is also the author of the relevant preexisting work, The Explosive Child. However, that coincidence does not affect the contours of the Treating Explosive Kids copyright, nor does it upset the joint ownership arrangement described above. Treating Explosive Kids may be both joint and derivative, with Greene alone owning the copyright in the -34- underlying work -- The Explosive Child -- and co-owning the copyright in the derivative work with Ablon.21 Hence, Greene might have a viable infringement claim against Ablon if Ablon created a derivative of Treating Explosive Kids, such as the slides, that used the non-original material in Treating Explosive Kids -- i.e., material derived from The Explosive Child and covered by Greene's copyright in that work. Consequently, Greene should have been allowed to introduce into evidence slides with expression drawn verbatim from Treating Explosive Kids. He could have used that expression to argue to the jury both that Treating Explosive Kids is a derivative work based on The Explosive Child and, relatedly, that Ablon drew on expression from Treating Explosive Kids that the co-owned Treating Explosive Kids copyright did not encompass. See, e.g., Oddo v. Ries, 743 F.2d 630, 634 (9th Cir. 1984) (holding that the co-owner of a derivative work infringes on the other co-owner's preexisting work when he uses it without permission in a subsequent work, notwithstanding that the preexisting work was used in the co-owned 21 Professor Nimmer provides another example of how a work may be both joint and derivative. He posits a screenplay based on a novel. [The] screenplay is a derivative work of the novel on which it is based. Let us imagine that [two writers] work together to translate the [novel] to the silver screen. Their resulting screenplay, as between themselves, is a joint work. Nonetheless, vis-a-vis the novel, their screenplay is a derivative work. One and the same production thus can occupy both statuses. 1 Nimmer § 6.05 (emphasis omitted). In that example, the screenplay writers co-own the screenplay copyright, which does not include expression from the preexisting novel. -35- derivative); see also Danjaq LLC v. Sony Corp., No. CV97-8414ER(Mcx), 1998 WL 957053, at  (C.D. Cal. Jul. 29, 1998) ([T]he owner of the copyright in the original work may sue the author(s) of a joint-derivative work who make further derivative works which employ pre-existing material from the original work without the permission of the owner of the original work.). Instead, the court only allowed Greene to introduce into evidence slides with expression that did not appear verbatim in Treating Explosive Kids, on the theory that only those slides would support an argument that Ablon had infringed Greene's copyright in The Explosive Child. On the record before us, however, we are unable to assess whether the district court's erroneous conclusion harmed Greene in any way. Greene failed to make an offer of proof of the alleged two dozen additional expressions that he claims he would have sought to introduce at trial if the court had allowed the jury to determine whether Treating Explosive Kids is a derivative work. See Fed. R. Evid. 103(a)(2) (requiring an offer of proof); Faigin v. Kelly, 184 F.3d 67, 86 (1st Cir. 1999) ([I]t is a bedrock rule of trial practice that, to preserve for appellate review a claim of error premised on the exclusion of evidence, the aggrieved party must ensure that the record sufficiently reflects the content of the proposed evidence. (internal quotation marks omitted)). Only one expression -- referred to at trial as the conventional wisdom expression -- was excluded with the necessary offer of proof. -36- However, the court excluded that expression in part because it was not subject to copyright protection, and Greene has not argued that the district court's analysis on that point was erroneous. Despite numerous opportunities to do so, including his opposition to the motion in limine, the final pretrial conference, and the trial, Greene has not identified any of the two dozen expressions he allegedly would have sought to introduce but for the court's ruling.22 Since Greene has not developed a record to show that he has been harmed, we decline to remand for further proceedings.