Opinion ID: 6487
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: infringement of user manuals

Text: The district court found that the StruCAD manual infringed EDI's copyright in its user manuals. This finding was based entirely on text, pictures, diagrams, illustrated examples, and flow charts depicted in the manuals, but not the input and output formats. 785 F.Supp. at 583. After these findings were entered, SSI revised its manual, but the parties could not agree as to whether this new manual infringed. The district judge referred the matter to a special master under Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 53. The special master issued findings and conclusions of law in a report in which it determined that SSI's new manual did not infringe. The district judge adopted the special master's report the same day it was filed. EDI argues that the findings of the special master, to the extent they were adopted by the district court, were clearly erroneous. In addition to procedural objections, discussed below, EDI insists that SSI's revised manual contains many examples of allegedly infringing material from the old manual which the district court had held to be infringing. One example EDI emphasizes in particular is SSI's repeated use of a table of default values of certain engineering constants admittedly taken from EDI's copyrighted manuals. These constants (specifically, drag and mass coefficients for structural members) were allegedly researched and compiled by EDI as part of 30 its efforts to accurately represent these forces in its computer program. They are not copyrightable, however, because they are facts, despite the fact that EDI may have discovered them through great expenditure of time or labor. See Feist, 499 U.S. at 347, 111 S.Ct. at 1288; Gates Rubber, 9 F.3d at 842-43 (mathematical constants used in computer program uncopyrightable). If the district court decides on remand that StruCAD's input formats infringe EDI's formats, the court must then reexamine the StruCAD manual after SSI revises it to avoid infringement. The district judge's rulings on other portions of SSI's manual seem somewhat contradictory, for EDI offers considerable evidence that SSI's revised manual incorporates many of the objectionable features that the district court found infringing in its first opinion. Nevertheless, it is unnecessary to review the revised SSI manual until it has been reconsidered on remand.