Court Opinion

ID: 9452342
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:37:43.43619+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:10.393064
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Chief Judge
(concurring) :
I concur in the holding that in the absence of agreement between newspaper publisher and advertiser the advertiser is entitled to the copyright in the advertisement. While I do not believe that this result can be based on the presumption invoked by the Court, that one who commissions a work owns the copyright in it, because the advertisers here did not pay any extra sum for the design and composition of the advertisements, see Altman v. New Haven Union Co., 254 F. 113, 118 (D.Conn.1918), I feel that the parties’ probable intent requires this result.
It is the newspaper publisher who copyrights the material in each issue of the newspaper by a single notice somewhere in the issue. See 17 U.S.C. § 3. On the other hand, the great majority of local advertisers, such as those who paid for the advertisements here at issue, have little or no knowledge of copyright law. It is altogether likely that some or all of them were not even aware that such advertisements might be the subject of copyright. It seems equally likely that they would suppose that after the newspaper had prepared and run their advertisements they could use them again. It would not seem likely to occur to such advertisers that the prices they paid might not cover the cost of preparing the advertisements ; nor do they have any way of knowing the economics of the situation.
Under these circumstances, it would be an inequitable interpretation of the copyright law to place the burden of inquiry upon advertisers to whom the need for such inquiry would not suggest itself. It is far more practical and equitable to place upon the newspaper publisher the burden of securing the consent of the advertiser that the copyright should be the property of the publisher, if the publisher feels that he should be protected by copyright against the competition of cheap reproduction by others of advertisements his staff has created.