Opinion ID: 575828
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fact or Expression?

Text: 12 Most of the passages on which plaintiff bases her allegations of copyright infringement convey facts or ideas. The copyrighted works are ten journal entries--eight from January 1945, one from February 1945, one from September 1947--and six letters from Wright to Dr. Walker. Dr. Walker paraphrases fourteen portions of the ten journal entries. These portions are short. All but two of them are one to three sentences long. Most importantly, of the fourteen sections taken from the journal entries, only three, under a generous reading of expression, adopt Wright's creative style. Two are quoted in the district court's opinion. See 748 F.Supp. at 110 n. 3. The remaining one involves Wright's discussion of the literary techniques he employed in his works. Even these, however, do not involve the kind of figurative appropriation that was condemned in Salinger. See 811 F.2d at 96. Yet, for purposes of this appeal, we will treat the biography's use of three portions of the paraphrased journal entries as borderline expression. 13 The biography's use of the six Wright/Walker letters merits similar treatment. The biography copies ten brief passages from the letters and paraphrases five equally short portions of them. The paraphrasing solely communicates facts (including some ideas) relating to events in Wright's life and mutual interests of the correspondents. Of the ten quoted sections, four bear Wright's stamp of creativity and meet the threshold test of copyright protection. The other six tersely convey mundane details of Wright's life and serve only to illustrate Dr. Walker's friendship with Wright. One, for example, explains Wright's regrets at not having written earlier; another requests Dr. Walker's permission to use one of her poems; still another requests clippings regarding a murder story; and a fourth discusses how much money Dr. Walker will need to visit New York. These examples are emblematic of the quoted passages from the letters and paraphrased portions of the letters and journals that are not entitled to copyright protection. Because we conclude that some portions of the journal entries and letters contain at least borderline expression, we disagree with those portions of the district court's opinion that intimate that the biography takes only facts from Wright's letters and journals. See 748 F.Supp. at 110, 114 (journal entries), 111 (letters). 14 Under a liberal interpretation of the fact/expression dichotomy, three paraphrased sections of Wright's journals and four quoted portions of the Wright/Walker letters are protected by copyright. Unless the doctrine of fair use applies to these appropriations, they constitute infringement. 15