Court Opinion

ID: 9444906
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:15:40.688209+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:03.658795
License: Public Domain

HASTIE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Plaintiff Ettore, a professional boxer, fought Joe Louis, in a Philadelphia stadium in 1936. With Ettore’s knowledge and consent this public spectacle was recorded on motion picture film by a third person in his own interest for subsequent commercial showings. Ettore bargained for and received for his services compensation which included “a 20 per cent percentage (sic) of all proceeds derived from motion picture rights.” The parties have stipulated that the motion picture rights were sold for $2500, of which $500 was paid to Ettore.
More than 13 years later the defendants exhibited these films by telecast from stations in Pennsylvania and New York. Invoking the diversity jurisdiction of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Ettore has sued the defendants claiming that these television showings have damaged him in an amount more than $3000.
This action' does not sound in contract. Apparently the defendants had no connection with the 1936 fight and are not in contractual relationship with Ettore. In any event, no breach of contract is alleged.
Plaintiff does claim a violation of his right of privacy. However, I think the court is clearly correct in concluding that this theory of liability fails. The right of privacy is a partially protected interest of personality. Its modern recognition is an effort to protect the individual against offense to his sensibilities caused by some unwanted and unwarranted publication of his likeness or activity. As a .participant in a professional prize fight Ettore was seeking as large an audience for his performance as promotional skill could attract to ringside and to the theaters where the fight films were subsequently exhibited. The addition of a television audience cannot rationally be regarded as making the publication offensive to the performer.
I also agree that plaintiff’s contention that his privacy was invaded is not improved by the fact that less than the entire spectacle was shown on television.
Entirely different considerations are raised by plaintiff’s additional claim that he has been deprived of some valuable property right. However, I think he cannot prevail on this theory either.
It is clear and not disputed that the person who made the movies of the LouisEttore fight, having bargained and paid for that privilege, had legal title to that article of commerce which is the film recording of the spectacle. But, as I understand the theory that has prevailed here, it is reasoned that there remained in each athlete whose professional performance gave the film its value a property right in the nature of a legal power to restrict the use of the recorded spectacle.
In such fields as literature, music and the graphic and dramatic arts, our judge made law has long recognized and to some extent protected an economic interest of the artist in that composition or performance which is the embodiment or expression of his special ability. This interest is vindicated by empowering the *497performer to' exercise some degree of control over the publication and use of the product in question. This conception inheres in such legal phrases as literary-property and common law copyright. Whether this property analysis should be extended into the field of sport to afford a professional performer there a sort of athletic property in the spectacle produced by his exhibition of physical strength, stamina and skill I am by no means sure. And on this point I do not find the cases helpful. However, beyond this caveat, I take no issue now with the court’s conclusion that the conception of an artist enjoying an incorporeal property in his performance should be extended to protect the professional athlete in relation to the sport spectacle he helps to produce.
But the legal protection of common law copyright and literary property has rather consistently been limited by a closely related conception that the showing or rendition of a production or composition may and often does amount to a dedication to the public which is inconsistent with and destructive of any property the artist or performer might otherwise retain in the product of his talent and skill.1 If disclosure is to all who may be interested rather than to a limited audience on a special occasion, the publication is said to be general and the consequent dedication of the artist’s creation or effort is unqualified. Applied to a professional athlete’s possible property in his demonstration ef skill and ability, this concept precludes him from both retaining property in a particular exhibition and at the same time consenting that the spectacle be seen and heard by all and sundry.
We have just such a situation here. Ettore did more than to make his performance available to as many persons as could be accommodated at the site of the boxing match. He also made it available through motion pictures to all who would come to view it in theaters throughout the country. For all practical purposes the matter was so arranged that whoever might wish and attempt to see the spectacle could view it originally or at later convenience. I find it difficult to conceive of a performance under circumstances which would more clearly show general publication and consequent dedication. Cf. Glazer v. Hoffman, 1943, 153 Fla. 809, 16 So.2d 53.
Such extinction of the participant’s claim as performer does not mean that any authorized commercial recording of the performance must be denied legal protection. In the era of the phonograph, radio and television, master films and sound recordings of artistic and other professional performances have become articles of great commercial value and importance. Courts are attempting to adapt flexible concepts of unfair competition to protect the owner of such an authorized recording in his commercial exploitation of that property against commercial recording and similar unfair and injurious practices, despite the publication inevitably involved in the owner’s exploitation of his recording. Capitol Records, Inc., v. Mercury Record Corp., 2 Cir., 1955, 221 F.2d 657. But if the performer shares in such protection it is not because he is a performer but rather because he has contracted for some interest in the recording or at least, in authorizing it, has imposed some restriction upon its use. This, as I understand it, is the significance of the decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Waring v. WDAS Broadcasting Station, Inc., 1937, 327 Pa. 433, 194 A. 631. There a musical organization had released recordings of its performance for public distribution and sale, but this was attended by an express reservation and restriction against radio broadcasting. This restriction was set out in *498writing on the face of each released record. In these circumstances the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania found that the musicians were entitled to protection coextensive with this express reservation. Cf. Murphy v. Christian Press Ass’n, Pub. Co., 1899, 38 App.Div. 426, 56 N.Y.S. 597. In Waring I find no intimation that, apart from such reservation, any performer’s property in the musical rendition would have survived an authorized general publication of a commercial recording. Cf. Ingram v. Bowers, 2 Cir., 1932, 57 F.2d 65; Noble v. One Sixty Commonwealth Ave., Inc., D.C.D.Mass.1937, 19 F.Supp. 671.
In the present case the court recognizes this difficulty. In consenting to the sale of motion picture rights for the fight Ettore made no effort to impose any restriction upon the use of the film. I think the court is mistaken in reasoning that, because television did not exist at that time, the law should treat “the absence of the new or unknown media * * as about the equivalent of a reservation against the use of the work product * * The error as I see it is in failing to take into account that at least some demonstration of purpose to hold something back is necessary to avoid the dedication which otherwise attends the general publication of the work product. In this case the fact that in 1936 motion picture projection was the only means available for public exhibition of fight films serves to emphasize the fact that Ettore published and dedicated the spectacle as completely as he knew how. This in my view is the very antithesis of the Waring situation.
I conclude, therefore, that Ettore retained no property in the pugilistic spectacle or its recording on film. In reaching this conclusion I have not said any-think about the problem of choice of controlling law which is discussed at length in the opinion of the court. However, I think that we all agree that, of the states concerned with this alleged deprivation of property, Pennsylvania, because of the Waring ease, seems as favorable as any other to the plaintiff.2 But, for the reasons already stated, I think the Waring case does not help the plaintiff, and I find no other decision in Pennsylvania or New York, the two points of origin of the questioned telecasts, which either helps the plaintiff or is inconsistent with the foregoing analysis of the problem.
Finally, I think this is not a type of case in which a federal court should be disposed to extend undefined frontiers of state law. Legal title to personal property, here some old fight films, normally connotes full power of commercial use and exploitation. Indeed, a rather strong public policy against legal recognition of attempts to burden chattels with equitable servitudes has characterized the development of our jurisprudence. See Chafee, “Equitable Servitudes on Chattels,” 1928, 41 Harv.L.Rev. 945. Here I think the court is going to the opposite extreme and imposing such a servitude by implication of law even in the absence of any effort of the party concerned to reserve such an interest.
For these reasons I think the judgment of the district court should be affirmed.

. For elaboration of this doctrine and commentary on the cases, see Werckmeister v. American Lithographic Co., 2 Cir., 1904, 134 F. 321, 68 L.R.A. 591; Warner, Protection of the Content of Radio and Television Programs by Common Law Copyright, 1950, 3 Vand.L. Rev. 209, 225-231.

. Relying upon decisions of New York inferior courts, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has concluded that New York law is in accord with the Waring case. Capitol Records, Inc., v. Mercury Record Corp., 1955, 221 F.2d 657.