Opinion ID: 659340
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The MPO Program

Text: 12 The district court concluded that LSI's MPO program infringed K-T's Licensed Materials. To reach that conclusion, the court had to find that (1) K-T owned a valid copyright over the Licensed Materials, (2) LSI copied portions of the Licensed Materials when it made the MPO program, and (3) among the portions copied were substantial protectable elements of the Licensed Materials. 2 LSI does not contest that K-T's Licensed Materials are covered by a valid copyright. Indeed, Vroom--a 50% partner in LSI--applied to register the V-Y Model materials that were subsequently licensed to K-T, evidently reflecting his belief that those materials were the proper subject of copyright protection. 3 Rather, LSI insists that (1) K-T failed to prove that LSI had actually copied K-T's licensed materials, and (2) the court erred in extending copyright protection to inherently unprotectable elements of K-T's materials. 13
14 LSI argues that the district court erred in finding that it had actually copied K-T's Licensed Materials, rather than copying other materials--possessed by third parties--that contained the same information. We find this argument to be without merit. 15 As direct evidence of copying is uncommon, plaintiffs generally demonstrate copyright infringement indirectly or inferentially by proving that (1) defendants had access to the copyrighted works, and (2) there is a substantial similarity between infringed and infringing works. 4 These copyright issues of access and substantial similarity are findings of fact and are consequently reviewed under the clearly erroneous standard. 5 In this case, the district court found that both Vroom and Jago had access to the Licensed Materials. As Vroom helped develop and write those materials, and as Jago relied on them in developing the MPO program, that finding is not clearly erroneous. Indeed, it is factually correct. 16 LSI, however, insists that K-T never demonstrated that LSI literally copied the specific materials that were licensed to K-T. But LSI's dogged insistence is nonsensical. Even if LSI did lift the offending expression from third party sources, its reproduction of that expression for commercial purposes may be infringing. Language copied from those third party sources was itself copied or derived from K-T's Licensed Materials, and its legality depends on copyright law. In other words, even if LSI copied a copy of K-T's Licensed Materials, such copying may still constitute infringement. Copying a copy of copyrighted materials is a cognizable contravention of the Copyright Code. 6 17 LSI does not dispute that there is substantial similarity between the MPO program and K-T's Licensed Materials. Indeed, LSI admits that the MPO program incorporates the same eight questions and five processes that the district court characterized as the heart and soul of the V-Y Model, which was licensed to K-T. Thus, the district court's finding that MPO is substantially similar to K-T's Licensed Materials is not clearly erroneous. In summary, neither the district court's finding that LSI had access to K-T's Licensed Materials, nor its finding that MPO program was substantially similar to those materials is clearly erroneous. Consequently, the district court's finding that LSI copied K-T's Licensed Materials is not clearly erroneous. 18
Copyrighted Materials 19 LSI argues nonetheless that the portions of K-T's licensed materials that it allegedly copied are but unprotectable ideas or facts, and that the district court therefore erred in holding that LSI infringed K-T's copyright. LSI is correct that the mere fact that K-T's Licensed Materials are copyrighted does not mean that all aspects of those materials are automatically protected. 7 Specifically, LSI rightly observes that copyright law protects tangible, original expressions of ideas, not ideas themselves. 8 [N]o author may copyright facts or ideas. The copyright is limited to those aspects of the work--termed 'expression'--that display the stamp of the author's originality. 9 Thus, if we conclude that LSI only copied unprotectable elements of K-T's materials, we must reverse the district court's judgment. 20 Unfortunately, the line between idea and expression is hard to draw. Additionally, when an idea can be expressed in very few ways, copyright law does not protect that expression, because doing so would confer a de facto monopoly over the idea. In such cases idea and expression are said to be merged. 10 To determine the scope of copyright protection in a close case, a court may have to filter out ideas, processes, facts, idea/expression mergers, and other unprotectable elements of plaintiff's copyrighted materials to ascertain whether the defendant infringed protectable elements of those materials. In this case, however, we disagree with LSI's contention that such a filtration process leads to the conclusion that the district court erred in finding that LSI's MPO program infringed K-T's Licensed Materials. 21 Although there is no evidence that the district court undertook a rigorous abstraction-filtration-comparison analysis of the sort approved by courts for sophisticated treatment of copyright cases, 11 such an analysis was not absolutely necessary here. The district court carefully juxtaposed selections from K-T's Licensed Materials with selections from the MPO program, thereby demonstrating a damning similarity--nay identity--of organization and language. This comparison of literal language or expression provided strong evidence for the court's finding that the MPO program infringed K-T's Licensed Materials. 22 Seizing upon the court's statement that the questions and processes of the Vroom-Yetton model are its heart and soul, LSI argues that these elements are inherent in the leadership management theory ... of the Vroom models, implying that questions and processes that comprise the V-Y Model are unprotectable ideas. LSI contends that there is no protectable expression remaining in K-T's licensed materials, once all unprotectable elements are filtered out. But this is absurd. 23 Each question and process in the V-Y Model is presented in a paragraph of text. There are countless ways of expressing the content of each paragraph, 12 so there was no need for the MPO screen text to copy exactly the language of K-T's materials. Even if each of the eight questions and five processes conveys unprotectable ideas, the specific words, phrases, and sentences selected to convey those ideas are protectable expression under any reasonable abstraction analysis. As LSI's MPO program copied those words, phrases, and sentences verbatim, we conclude that--far from being clearly erroneous--the district court's finding that the MPO program infringed K-T's Licensed Materials was correct and must be affirmed. 13