Opinion ID: 789734
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prather v. Neva Paperbacks, Inc.

Text: 159 In Prather v. Neva Paperbacks, Inc., 410 F.2d 698 (1969), the Fifth Circuit squarely held that an assignee of an accrued cause of action is a proper party to bring suit for copyright infringement. In my view, this case provides persuasive authority that this circuit should follow. 160 Plaintiff Prather (Prather) was the author of several books. Prather held the copyright on one of the books and the copyright to the remaining books was held by Prather's publisher, Fawcett Publications. Prather discovered that the copyright on one of the books (the rights to which were owned by Fawcett) had been infringed by book publisher Neva Paperbacks, Inc. (Neva). After discovering the infringement, Prather obtained some of the copyright rights and an assignment of all present, past and future causes of action. 19 Significantly, however, Fawcett simultaneously with assigning the copyright to Prather, retained an exclusive license to the English language rights for books throughout the world. Id. at 699 n. 1. 161 Prather brought suit against Neva for copyright infringement. Neva moved to dismiss, arguing that plaintiff Prather did not have standing to bring suit because Prather was not the proprietor of the copyright as required under the 1909 Act. See 17 U.S.C. § 101(a) (1952). Rather, Neva argued that because the copyright rights had been split, Prather was a mere licensee and not the sole proprietor under Section 101. 162 The Fifth Circuit affirmed the trial court's denial of the defendant's motion to dismiss and held that Prather did, in fact, have standing to sue. In so holding, the Fifth Circuit reasoned that the assignment was simply a simple assignment of a chose in action — a contract — that contained express language of assignment. See Prather, 410 F.2d at 699-700. The court concluded: 163 As an assignee of the causes of action for infringement damages past, present and future, Prather has the right to maintain the action under 17 U.S.C.A. [§] § 101 et seq. For infringement. There is no public policy against such assignments and under F[ED].R.CIV.P. 17 such assignee of all choses in action for infringement, whether a `proprietor' or not, has standing to sue and the court has effective power to avoid altogether the risk of double suit or double recovery. 164 Id. at 700 (emphasis added). 165 Under Prather, then, courts will not require plaintiff to hold ownership of one or more of the exclusive rights of a copyright owner to have standing. 166 The Majority states that Prather is unhelpful authority for two reasons: (1) it was decided under the 1909 Act, and not the 1976 Act; and (2) the assignment in Prather involved both accrued causes of action and some of what we now call exclusive rights. Op. at 889 (emphasis in original). The Majority argues the Prather court was not faced, as we are, with a situation in which the owner of all the exclusive rights and the owner of the accrued causes of action are two different people. Op. at 889. Neither distinction is persuasive. 167 First, the Majority's attempt to distinguish Prather as predicated on the 1909 Act is unpersuasive, given that courts have recognized that [i]n enacting § 501(b)'s standing provision, Congress `merely codified the case law that had developed [under the 1909 Act] with respect to the beneficial owner's standing to sue.' 20 Moran v. London Records, Ltd., 827 F.2d 180, 183 (7th Cir.1987) (internal citation omitted). See also Gardner, 279 F.3d at 778 (9th Cir.2002) (holding that a sublicensee of a copyright lacked standing to sue under the 1976 Act on the ground that the pre-1976 law so prohibited). 21 Accord, H.R. 94-1476 at 47, reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5659, 5660 ([t]he present copyright law, title 17 of the United States Code, is basically the same as the act of 1909.). 168 Second, that Prather owned rights to the books (other than the English language rights), Neva argued, made Prather a licensee of book rights — not the owner of what we would now call exclusive rights. An assignee could not be the owner of book rights because the exclusive right to republish could not be split away from the copyright under the 1909 Act; that is precisely what the 1976 Act changed. Licensees did not have standing to bring suit under the 1909 Act. Therefore, Prather, as a (mere) licensee, could not have had standing to sue but for his standing as the assignee of an accrued cause of action for infringement. See, e.g., Gardner, 279 F.3d at 778 (only the copyright proprietor (which would include an assignee but not a licensee ) had standing to bring an infringement action.). 169 Moreover, the assignment to Prather of some rights did not help Prather establish his right to sue; just the opposite. The fact that he got some but not all rights of copyright was used by the defendants to undermine his standing and was in no sense a grounds used by the Prather court to validate the assignment. Indeed, the court rejected this argument and refused to get into the metaphysical dialectic of the button game of determining who had the copyright. Prather, 410 F.2d at 699. 170 In my view, to interpret Prather as holding that an assignee of an accrued cause of action was required to be an assignee of some rights under the copyright would be a profound misreading of the case. Rather than essential to establish standing, having (only) some rights made out what defendant Neva urged as an affirmative defense. 171