Opinion ID: 219099
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Moral Dimensions

Text: One source of confusion in addressing these misappropriation cases is that INS itself was a case brought in equity to enjoin INS from copying AP's uncopyrightable news. In that context, the INS Court emphasized the unfairness of INS's practice of pirating AP's stories. It condemned, in what sounded biblical in tone, the defendant's reap[ing] where it ha[d] not sown. [27] INS, 248 U.S. at 239, 39 S.Ct. 68. The Court said: This defendant ... admits that it is taking material that has been acquired by complainant as the result of organization and the expenditure of labor, skill, and money, and which is salable by complainant for money, and that defendant in appropriating it and selling it as its own is endeavoring to reap where it has not sown, and by disposing of it to newspapers that are competitors of complainant's members is appropriating to itself the harvest of those who have sown. Stripped of all disguises, the process amounts to an unauthorized interference with the normal operation of complainant's legitimate business precisely at the point where the profit is to be reaped, in order to divert a material portion of the profit from those who have earned it to those who have not; with special advantage to defendant in the competition because of the fact that it is not burdened with any part of the expense of gathering the news. The transaction speaks for itself, and a court of equity ought not to hesitate long in characterizing it as unfair competition in business. Id. at 239-40, 39 S.Ct. 68 (emphasis added). This dicta has been absorbed by New York misappropriation law: New York courts have noted the incalculable variety of illegal practices falling within the unfair competition rubric, calling it a broad and flexible doctrine that depends more upon the facts set forth than in most causes of action. It has been broadly described as encompassing any form of commercial immorality, or simply as endeavoring to reap where one has not sown; it is taking the skill, expenditures and labors of a competitor, and misappropriating for the commercial advantage of one person a benefit or property right belonging to another. The tort is adaptable and capacious. Roy Exp. Co. Establishment of Vaduz, Liech. v. Columbia Broad. Sys., Inc., 672 F.2d 1095, 1105 (2d Cir.1982) (citation and alteration omitted). And it has been reflected in the rhetoric of federal district courts applying New York law. See, e.g., Fly I, 700 F.Supp.2d at 336 (quoting INS ); NBA v. Sports Team Analysis & Tracking Sys. ( NBA SDNY ), 939 F.Supp. 1071, 1075 (S.D.N.Y.1996) (quoting INS ), rev'd, NBA, 105 F.3d 841. The NBA Court also noted that the district court whose decision it was reviewing had described New York misappropriation law as standing for the `broader principle that property rights of commercial value are to be and will be protected from any form of commercial immorality'; that misappropriation law developed `to deal with business malpractices offensive to the ethics of [] society'; and that the doctrine is `broad and flexible.' NBA, 105 F.3d at 851 (brackets in original) (quoting NBA SDNY, 939 F.Supp. at 1098-1110) (internal citation omitted). But Judge Winter explicitly rejected the notion that hot news misappropriation cases based on the disapproval of the perceived unethical nature of a defendant's ostensibly piratical acts survive preemption. The Court concluded that such concepts are virtually synonymous [with] wrongful copying and are in no meaningful fashion distinguishable from infringement of a copyright. The broad misappropriation doctrine relied upon by the district court is, therefore, the equivalent of exclusive rights in copyright law. NBA, 105 F.3d at 851 (deeming preempted the broad theory of misappropriation embodied in Metropolitan Opera Ass'n v. Wagner-Nichols Recorder Corp., 199 Misc. 786, 101 N.Y.S.2d 483 (N.Y. County Sup. Ct.1950), aff'd, 279 A.D. 632, 107 N.Y.S.2d 795 (1st Dep't 1951)). No matter how unfair Motorola's use of NBA facts and statistics may have been to the NBA  or Fly's use of the fact of the Firms' Recommendations may be to the Firms  then, such unfairness alone is immaterial to a determination whether a cause of action for misappropriation has been preempted by the Copyright Act. [28] The adoption of new technology that injures or destroys present business models is commonplace. Whether fair or not, [29] that cannot, without more, be prevented by application of the misappropriation tort. Indeed, because the Copyright Act itself provides a remedy for wrongful copying, such unfairness may be seen as supporting a finding that the Act preempts the tort. See id.