Opinion ID: 575828
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Third-Party Beneficiary Contract Claim

Text: 32 Plaintiff also contends that Dr. Walker's use of Wright's journals violates an agreement between Dr. Walker and Yale University's Beinecke Library. Plaintiff brings this claim as a third-party beneficiary of the contract--as owner of the copyrights in the materials covered by the contract. Yale obtained the materials in the Wright Archives, including Wright's journals, from plaintiff for $175,000. The record reveals no direct evidence that Dr. Walker signed the library agreement at issue. For purposes of considering defendants' motion for summary judgment on this claim, however, we will assume that Dr. Walker signed the agreement. 33 The agreement requires the scholar to abide by, among other rules, this one: Yale University Library manuscripts may not be published in whole or in part unless such publication is specifically authorized. Dr. Walker's use of Wright's journals did not breach this agreement. The agreement restricts wholesale or partial publication of manuscripts. It does not speak to paraphrasing of facts or ideas, nor even of expression, contained in the manuscripts. As we indicated earlier, Dr. Walker did not quote from the Wright journals. Her careful paraphrasing, moreover, was almost exclusively factual, with the exception of less than a handful of insignificant instances where she adopted borderline creative expression. It defies common sense to construe this agreement as giving scholars access to manuscripts with one hand but then prohibiting them from using the manuscripts in any meaningful way with the other. Plaintiff has offered no evidence that Yale intended the agreement to be so pointless. 34 Plaintiff also has failed to present any evidence indicating that Yale intended this agreement to preclude fair use. Judge Walker found that [t]he agreement does not appear to have contemplated the exclusion of fair use by biographers. 748 F.Supp. at 114. Construing similar agreements, Judge Leval reached a like conclusion in Salinger: 35 [T]he intention and scope of [the] agreements are to protect the literary property interests of the owner and not to give the copyright owner an arbitrary power to block legitimate non-infringing use. 36 .... [T]his restriction should be understood as applying only to quotations and excerpts that infringe copyright. To read them as absolutely forbidding any quotation, no matter how limited or appropriate, would severely inhibit proper, lawful scholarly use and place an arbitrary power in the hands of the copyright owner going far beyond the protection provided by law. 37 650 F.Supp. 413, 427 (S.D.N.Y.1986), rev'd on other grounds, 811 F.2d 90 (2d Cir.1987). Here, where the material was paraphrased--not even closely in most instances--it seems particularly paradoxical to construe the agreement as conferring greater protection on the copyright holder than that provided by the Copyright Act. As Judge Walker accurately stated: [A]ny more restrictive interpretation of the agreement ... would amount to a finding that Yale University sought to prevent the airing of historical facts rather than the unfair exploitation of another's creative imagination or style--a finding at odds with the very purpose of a great university. Wright, 748 F.Supp. at 114. In sum, because the agreement's reference to publication does not on its face refer to paraphrasing, and because plaintiff has offered no evidence or convincing rationale why the agreement would prohibit fair use, we affirm the district court's decision to dismiss plaintiff's third-party beneficiary claim.