Opinion ID: 27815
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Supreme Court's View

Text: 10 Excluding the law from the purview of the copyright statutes dates back to this nation's earliest period. In 1834, the Supreme Court interpreted the first federal copyright laws and unanimously held that no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions delivered by this Court ... Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591, 668, 8 L.Ed. 1055 (1834). The case arose when one of the Court's official reporters was asserting copyright protection for his annotated compilations of Supreme Court opinions. The Court distinguished between the reporter's individual work and the Justices' opinions. The Court's rejection of copyright for judicial opinions paralleled the principle — recognized by attorneys for both parties — that [s]tatutes were never copyrighted. 3 Based on the acknowledged and incontestable analogy with legislative acts, Wheaton held unanimously that the law in the form of judicial opinions may not be copyrighted. 11 The same broad understanding of what constitutes the law for copyright purposes underlies the Court's later decision in Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244, 9 S.Ct. 36, 32 L.Ed. 425 (1888). The Court there denied a copyright to a court reporter in his printing of the opinions of the Ohio Supreme Court. The Court first noted that whatever work the judges perform in their official capacity cannot be regarded as authorship under the copyright law. As a question of public policy, the Court stated that, 12 there has always been a judicial consensus, from the time of the decision in the case of Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Pet. 591, 8 L.Ed. 1055, that no copyright could, under the statutes passed by Congress, be secured in the products of the labor done by judicial officers in the discharge of their judicial duties. The whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all, whether it is a declaration of unwritten law, or an interpretation of a constitution or statute. 13 Banks, 128 U.S. at 253, 9 S.Ct. at 40. (emphasis added). At this point, Banks relied upon a decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which stated, 14 [I]t needs no argument to show that justice requires that all should have free access to the opinions, and that it is against sound public policy to prevent this, or to suppress and keep from the earliest knowledge of the public the statutes, or the decisions and opinions of the Justices. 15 Nash v. Lathrop, 142 Mass. 29, 6 N.E. 559 (1886). The court in Nash further observed that a legislature likewise could not deny public access to statutes. 16 Banks represents a continuous understanding that the law, whether articulated in judicial opinions or legislative acts or ordinances, is in the public domain and thus not amenable to copyright. 4 Modern decisions have followed suit. 5 Significantly, the 1976 Copyright Act specifically denies protection to federal statutes and regulations. 17 U.S.C. § 105. Given the state law foundation of Banks and its progeny, there is no reason to believe that state or local laws are copyrightable. See generally L. Ray Patterson & Craig Joyce, Monopolizing the Law: The Scope of Copyright Protection for Law Reports and Statutory Compilations, 36 U.C.L.A. L. REV. 719, 751-58 (1989); 1 MELVILLE B. NIMMER & DAVID NIMMER, NIMMER ON COPYRIGHT § 5.06[c] at 5-92 (2000) (state statutes, no less than federal statutes, are regarded as being in the public domain); 1 PATRY, COPYRIGHT LAW AND PRACTICE 351, 357 (1994). 17 As governing law, pursuant to Banks, the building codes of Anna and Savoy, Texas cannot be copyrighted. 18 SBCCI and its numerous amici 6 must limit or circumvent the Banks line of cases in order to prevail. Initially, SBCCI divides Banks into two holdings and concludes that either holding must be squared with the policies and purposes of copyright law. This not insubstantial mode of analysis must be carefully reviewed. 19 The first holding of Banks is said to deny copyright to judicial opinions because judges, whose salaries are paid by the government, cannot claim to be authors of their official works. SBCCI contends that this discussion shows only that judges have no need of the Copyright Act's economic incentives in order to author judicial opinions. Banks, it is implied, articulates a utilitarian rationale for denying copyright protection to judicial opinions. SBCCI contrasts government employees with the private authors of model codes who allegedly depend on copyright incentives in order to perform their public service. SBCCI concludes that this prong of Banks does not apply to private code-writing organizations whose work has been adopted or incorporated into statutes, ordinances, or government regulations. Two courts, in addition to the panel that originally heard this case, have identified the consideration of authorship incentives as a holding of Banks. See Practice Management Info. Corp. v. American Medical Ass'n, 121 F.3d 516, 518 (9th Cir.1997), opinion amended by 133 F.3d 1140 (9th Cir.1998); 7 County of Suffolk v. First American Real Estate Solutions, 261 F.3d 179, 194 (2d Cir.2001). 20 The second holding of Banks, which requires the law or its exposition to be free for publication to all, is recharacterized by SBCCI as a due process argument. That argument devolves into a factual question concerning public access to the law. Because SBCCI contends that there is no dispute about the adequacy of public access to its model codes, after their enactment as the building codes of Anna and Savoy, Banks is inapplicable. 21 The dual holding analysis seems to foist on Banks a rationale that the Supreme Court never explicitly articulated. Banks, however, does not bifurcate its holding based on the particular authors' need of the Copyright Act's incentives or a factual calculus concerning the adequacy of public access to the law. Instead, Banks declares at the outset of its discussion that copyright law in the United States is purely a matter of statutory construction. See Banks, 128 U.S. at 251, 9 S.Ct. at 39. In the next paragraph, the Court points out that the court reporter was not the statutory author of the judicial decisions. Then, the Court states that 22 In no proper sense can the judge who, in his judicial capacity, prepares the opinion or decision, the statement of the case, and the syllabus, or head-note, be regarded as their author or their proprietor, in the sense of [the copyright statute]... 23 Judges, as is well understood, receive from the public treasury a stated annual salary, fixed by law, and can themselves have no pecuniary interest or proprietorship, as against the public at large, in the fruits of their judicial labors. 24 128 U.S. at 253, 9 S.Ct. at 40. The Court then broadly defines the judges' official work and states that as a matter of public policy and judicial consensus, no copyright could, under the statutes passed by Congress, be secured in the products of the labor done by judicial officers in the discharge of their official duties. This paragraph of Banks climaxes with the explanation: 25 The whole work done by the judges constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which, binding every citizen, is free for publication to all, whether it is a declaration of unwritten law, or an interpretation of a constitution or statute. Id. at 253-54, 9 S.Ct. 36 [citing Nash v. Lathrop ]. 26 There is simply no independent holding in Banks that judges are not authors under the copyright law because, as public officials, they do not need the incentives that copyright law affords in order to write opinions. Instead, Banks refers to the source of the judges' salary in order to explain that it is the public at large, not the judges, who have the pecuniary interest or proprietorship in the fruits of their judicial labors. The whole of those judicial labors, as Banks immediately defines them, constitutes the authentic exposition and interpretation of the law, which is free for publication to all ... Id. 8 27 Moreover, when viewed in light of Wheaton, the last case relied on by Banks 's analysis, the argument for bifurcation is seriously weakened. Wheaton 's holding, as has been shown, derives from an analogy between judicial opinions and legislative acts as together constituting the law, which is not subject to copyright. 28 The origin of the bifurcated holding interpretation of Banks seems to lie in the First Circuit's thoughtful opinion in Building Officials and Code Adm. v. Code Technology, Inc., 628 F.2d 730 (1st Cir.1980), but the First Circuit does not endorse bifurcation. In this opinion, which will be discussed further infra, the First Circuit considered the argument of BOCA, the model code writer, urging copyright protection for a model building code similar in origin and purpose to the one before us. BOCA's argument, the court said, implies that the rule of Wheaton v. Peters was based on the public's property interest in work produced by legislators and judges, who are, of course, government employees. BOCA, 628 F.2d at 734. 29 While acknowledging that this interpretation is not without foundation, the First Circuit cautioned: But BOCA 's argument overlooks another aspect of the ownership theory discussed in these cases. Id. BOCA then identifies the real premises of Banks and related cases: the metaphorical concept of citizen authorship of the law, together with the very important and practical policy that citizens must have free access to the laws which govern them. Id. BOCA cited the authorship rationale for Banks only to find it unsatisfactory. In our view, BOCA was correct. 30 Only by bifurcating Banks can SBCCI achieve its purpose of claiming authorship of the law and proprietary rights in its codes that have been enacted into law. However, the acceptance of SBCCI's and the dissent's theory, that non-governmental employees who draft model statutes or regulations may be entitled to copyright protection, raises troubling issues. The complexities of modern life and the breadth of problems addressed by government entities necessitate continuous participation by private experts and interest groups in all aspects of statutory and regulatory lawmaking. According to SBCCI, a utilitarian test should be invoked to determine which organizations need the incentives provided by the Copyright Act in order to perform the public service of drafting specialized statutes, ordinances or regulations. Alternatively, perhaps SBCCI and the dissent intend that whenever any private author finds his or her proposal adopted verbatim in law, copyright protection may be claimed. 9 As an example, three law professors have taken credit for drafting a recent federal statute on supplemental federal court jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367; Christopher M. Fairman, Abdication to Academia: The Case of the Supplemental Jurisdiction Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1367, 19 SETON HALL LEGIS. J. 157 (1994). Under SBCCI's reasoning, it is likely that these professors, had they so desired, could have asserted a copyright in their model supplemental jurisdictional provision. 10 SBCCI offers no outer limit on claims of copyright prerogatives by nongovernmental persons who contribute to writing the law. 31 Not only is the question of authorship of the law exceedingly complicated by SBCCI's and the dissent's position, but in the end, the authorship question ignores the democratic process. Lawmaking bodies in this country enact rules and regulations only with the consent of the governed. The very process of lawmaking demands and incorporates contributions by the people, in an infinite variety of individual and organizational capacities. Even when a governmental body consciously decides to enact proposed model building codes, it does so based on various legislative considerations, the sum of which produce its version of the law. In performing their function, the lawmakers represent the public will, and the public are the final authors of the law. The BOCA decision put it thus: 32 The citizens are the authors of the law, and therefore its owners, regardless of who actually drafts the provisions, because the law derives its authority from the consent of the public, expressed through the democratic process. 33 628 F.2d at 734. 11 This metaphorical concept of citizen authorship together with the need for citizens to have free access to the laws are the ultimate holding of Banks. Id. 34 BOCA described free access as a policy based on the concept of due process, the people's right to know what the law requires so that they may obey it and avoid its sanctions. SBCCI and the dissent contend that this due process reasoning involves nothing more than the factual issue of sufficient public access to the building codes of Anna and Savoy. Since a copy of the codes is available for inspection and individual copying in a public office, SBCCI contends that the obligations of due process are fulfilled. 35 We disagree that the question of public access can be limited to the minimum availability that SBCCI would permit. Banks does not use the term due process. There is also no suggestion that the Banks concept of free access to the law is a factual determination or is limited to due process, as the term is understood today. Instead, public ownership of the law means precisely that the law is in the public domain for whatever use the citizens choose to make of it. Citizens may reproduce copies of the law for many purposes, not only to guide their actions but to influence future legislation, educate their neighborhood association, or simply to amuse. If a citizen wanted to place an advertisement in a newspaper quoting the Anna, Texas building code in order to indicate his dissatisfaction with its complexities, it would seem that he could do so. In our view, to say, as Banks does, that the law is free for publication to all is to expand, not factually limit, the extent of its availability. 36 Moreover, as the BOCA decision observed, it is difficult to reconcile the public's right to know the law with the statutory right of a copyright holder to exclude his work from any publication or dissemination. SBCCI responds that due process must be balanced against its proprietary rights and that the fair use doctrine as well as its honorable intentions will prevent abuse. Free availability of the law, by this logic, has degenerated into availability as long as SBCCI chooses not to file suit. 12 37 For these reasons, we reject SBCCI's deconstruction of Banks into merely utilitarian and factual issues. Instead, we read Banks, Wheaton, and related cases consistently to enunciate the principle that the law, whether it has its source in judicial opinions or statutes, ordinances or regulations, is not subject to federal copyright law. 13 38 To sum up this section, we hold that when Veeck copied only the law of Anna and Savoy, Texas, which he obtained from SBCCI's publication, and when he reprinted only the law of those municipalities, he did not infringe SBCCI's copyrights in its model building codes. The basic proposition was stated by Justice Harlan, writing for the Sixth Circuit: any person desiring to publish the statutes of a state may use any copy of such statutes to be found in any printed book ... Howell v. Miller, 91 F. 129, 137 (6th Cir.1898). 14 See Jerry E. Smith, Government Documents: Their Copyright and Ownership, 22 Copyright Symposium 147, 174 (ASCAP 1977), reprinted in 5 TEX. TECH L. REV. 71, 92 (1973).