Opinion ID: 74012
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: did korman grant wqba a

Text: NONEXCLUSIVE LICENSE? 4 Initially, Korman challenges the district court’s holding that she granted WQBA a nonexclusive license to use the jingle.1 We reject that challenge. While an exclusive license to use copyrighted material must be written, a nonexclusive license can be granted orally or can be implied from the conduct of the parties. See 17 U.S.C. § 204; Jacob Maxwell, Inc. v. Veeck, 110 F.3d 749, 751-52 (11th Cir. 1997). HBC does not contend that Korman orally gave it an explicit license to use the jingle; HBC argues instead that Korman’s conduct gave it an implied license. In Jacob Maxwell, a song had been written for the Miracle, a minor league baseball team. We concluded that an implied, nonexclusive license had been granted because the owner of the copyright, JMI, had allowed the Miracle to play the song at its games. See id. at 752-53. We explained: “JMI cannot reasonably deny, given its subsequent conduct here, that it granted to the Miracle the sort of lesser, nonexclusive license to play the piece during the summer of 1993 that federal law recognizes may result from a purely oral transaction.” Id. at 753. As in Jacob Maxwell, the conduct of the parties in this case establishes that a nonexclusive license was granted. Korman wrote jingles for WQBA for seven years, and during that time she allowed the station to air those jingles, including the 1 The district court assumed that Korman possessed a valid copyright. Without conceding the issue, HBC made the same assumption in its brief to us, and we, too, will assume for present purposes that Korman has a valid copyright in the jingle. 5 one at issue in this case. Given that conduct, she “cannot reasonably deny” that she granted WQBA a nonexclusive license to use her jingle.