Court Opinion

ID: 9472976
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:16:27.576353+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:15.702953
License: Public Domain

JON 0. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Agreeing with all of what Judge Oakes has written on the fair use aspect of this appeal and with most of his observations on the issue of copyrightability, I concur in the decision to remand for further findings. The usefulness of the remand may be enhanced by some brief further elaboration of the issues.
The basic question on the copyright issue is whether the Daily Called Bond Cards, published by Financial Information, Inc. (“FII”), are a “compilation” within the meaning of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 103(a) (1982). Preferring not to extend copyright protection to all collections of facts, Congress has defined a “compilation” as “a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.” Id. § 101 (emphasis added). Thus, the primary task for the District Court is to determine whether the data appearing on the Daily Called Bond Cards have been “selected, coordinated, or arranged” so as to constitute an original work of authorship.
I do not share the view that Congress, in establishing these criteria, or this Court, in insisting that they be satisfied, has defined the laws of logic or of algebra. The “whole” of a copyrightable “compilation” is not greater than the sum of its “parts.” If its “parts” are only the discrete items of data that have been collected, the resulting work is not copyrightable. It may receive a valid copyright only if something has been added to the data: the “authorship” of the compiler in making the requisite selection, coordination, or arrangement of the data. The fact that some language in early cases, see Jeweler’s Circular Publishing Co. v. Keystone Publishing Co., 281 F. 83, 87 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 259 U.S. 581, 42 S.Ct. 464, 66 L.Ed. 1074 (1922), and, perhaps, even some results reached in those cases, e.g., Leon v. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., 91 F.2d 484 (9th Cir. 1937), have supported a view that copyright protection should be extended solely because of laborious effort is no reason for us to disregard the statutory criteria that Congress articulated in 1976 when it enacted the current statute. The “sweat of the brow” rationale is no substitute for meeting one of those statutory criteria.
A second aspect of the copyright issue arises in this litigation because of the fact that the Daily Called Bond Cards are initially issued daily as individual cards and subsequently issued annually in a bound volume. This fact poses issues of procedural compliance with copyright registration requirements and substantive entitle*511ment to copyright protection. The procedural issue is whether the cards, as issued on a daily basis with notice of copyright, 17 U.S.C. § 401, were required to be registered with the Copyright Office pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 408, see id. § 411 (prohibiting infringement suit prior to registration of copyright claim), or whether registration of the annual volume sufficed, see id. § 408(c)(1) (authorizing regulations to permit single registration for group of “related works”). We have not yet resolved that issue.
If annual registration sufficed, the substantive issue is whether the statutory criteria of a protectable “compilation” must be satisfied by each card or only by the series of cards that constitute FII’s called bond “service” and are collected in the annual volume. I am not as sure as Judge Carter that the copyrightability of the annual volume (assuming for the moment that such can be established) necessarily requires copyright protection for the daily cards. The annual volume may satisfy the statutory criteria of a “compilation” even though the daily cards do not. Congress has recognized that the copyright in a compilation “extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the pre-existing material employed in the work____” 17 U.S.C. § 103(b). Just as the cards might be copyrightable though the data on them are not, so the annual volume might be copyrightable even if the daily cards are not.
It remains to be determined what copyright protection, if any, the copyright in the annual volume confers upon the daily cards. I doubt that protection of each card may arise simply because denial of protection would impair the value of the copyright in the annual volume. That argument seems to be boot-strapping. However, the daily components of a serial publication perhaps might be copyrightable because of their relationship to each other as issued, as distinguished from their relationship to each other as collected in an annual volume. For example, a mystery story published in the form of daily clues might secure protection for each clue because of its relationship to what has previously appeared and perhaps even to what will appear. The application of that approach to reported facts like those appearing on FII’s cards is arguable, though doubtful since these facts appear to have primary significance as issued each day.
By copying FII’s daily cards, Moody’s is not necessarily a copyright infringer or a “serial thief.” Though it would be liable for conversion if it had stolen from FII’s office the sheets on which the daily data are assembled for publication and might be liable for unfair competition if it appropriated for competitive purposes material not entitled to copyright,1 it has not committed copyright infringement unless the* material it has copied is entitled to copyright protection.
Whether such protection exists cannot be determined until further facts have been found. Principal among these are the facts concerning whatever selection, coordination, or arrangement of the data on the cards may have occurred. I therefore concur in the decision to remand for further inquiry.

. If the Daily Called Bond Cards are not copyrightable compilations, FII’s unfair competition claim under state law might not be preempted either because FII would not be asserting rights "that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright” or because the cards are not "works of authorship,” 17 U.S.C. § 301. See 1 Nimmer on Copyright § 1.01 [B] at 1-22 (1984) (“if a work does not constitute a 'work of authorship,' ... as a compilation ... under Section 103, then there is no federal preemption”) (footnotes omitted).