Opinion ID: 1239364
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Plaintiff's property interest

Text: Defendants contend that, after plaintiffs sell their records, they have no property interest in them to be protected. Defendants argue that application of the unfair competition doctrine would create a perpetual copyright in favor of the plaintiffs and give them the power to forever exclude third persons from copying the works they have promulgated. The court disposed of a similar argument in I. N. S., when it said: The question here is not so much the rights of either party as against the public but their rights as between themselves. . . . And although we may and do assume that neither party has any remaining property interest as against the public in uncopyrighted news matter after the moment of its first publication, it by no means follows that there is no remaining property interest in it as between themselves. (P. 236) In the instant case, then, this court need not decide that plaintiffs retain a property interest as against the buying public in order to hold in favor of the plaintiffs' cause of action. The property interest protected is plaintiffs' professional investment of time, skill, and money in the recordings. Recognizing a cause of action in unfair competition for the plaintiffs gives the plaintiffs protection against defendants' appropriation, the larceny, of plaintiffs' efforts. In Goldstein, the court explained that, although the state may grant an exclusive right as against misappropriations, that right is limited to the borders of that state. Consequently, even when the right is unlimited in duration, any tendency to inhibit further progress in science or the arts is narrowly circumscribed. Goldstein, at page 561. The trial judge attempted to distinguish I. N. S. from the instant case on the ground the injunction in I. N. S. restrained International News Service from gainfully using the Associated Press' news ` until its commercial value as news to the complainant and all of its members has passed away.' I. N. S., at page 245. He stated it was too big a leap to go from that limited injunction of I. N. S. to conferring a common-law right on property. Here, the leap, however, is a logical step. In I. N. S., the injunction was denominated as temporary until the news value was lost. Practically, the injunction was permanent, because it ceased only when the news was valueless to either A. P. or the misappropriator. Here, the injunction need only be maintained until the commercial value of the recording to the plaintiffs is reduced substantially to zero. The rationale is identical. Defendants are less than accurate when they argue that protection for the plaintiffs under unfair competition will enable plaintiffs to exclude third persons from copying plaintiffs' works. The misappropriation doctrine, like the statute in Goldstein, would not prevent defendants from hiring artists to imitate or simulate plaintiffs' artists, and defendants could produce their own recordings to sound exactly or almost like those of the plaintiffs. Goldstein, at page 571. The stricture against misappropriation would not prevent this, because defendants would not be gaining the competitive advantage they do by pirating plaintiffs' recordings. Nor, under I. N. S., do plaintiffs lose their right to claim unfair competition by selling their recordings. I. N. S. ruled that publication was not an abandonment to the public, because it was a limited publicationa publication limited to the purpose of benefiting the readers, and not for the purpose of making merchandise of the news that would result in depriving A. P.'s members of their reasonable opportunity to obtain just returns. I. N. S., at page 241. The court said abandonment was a matter of intent and it was not intended in that case. I. N. S., at page 240. By selling their recordings to the public, plaintiffs surely did not intend to abandon them to defendants for piracy.