Court Opinion

ID: 9447640
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:39:52.029486+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:07.459383
License: Public Domain

WASHINGTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
I would affirm the judgment of the District Court. I do not believe that the dissemination of the 22 speeches delivered prior to December 1, 1958, was such as would defeat the author’s common law right of first publication. They were therefore not in the public domain when Admiral Rickover filed his application for registration of the speeches in compiled form under Section 12 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 12 (1958). Consequently, nothing in Section 8 of the Act would bar the validity of the copyright thus secured, both as to the compilation and as to the individual speeches contained in it.
It is clear that Admiral Rickover intended to foster the widest public dissemination of his words — as current news — for the sake of advancing his own views and programs. But I think that it is equally clear that he meant to preserve, and actually did preserve, the exclusive *273right to publish the speeches in compiled form after their immediate news value had passed away. Speeches of men in the forefront of public life are unique among literary products. Not only are they often works of considerable literary merit, but they may also be “news” of the first importance. As “news” they deserve the widest unfettered contemporaneous dissemination. Where, as here, an author seeks to advance this end by making copies of his speeches available to the press and other interested persons, he is serving the public’s interest as well as his own. But insofar as they have a commercial value as literary works after their immediate news importance has passed, they belong appropriately to their creator. The public interest in the news value of the author’s work may cut across or postpone his rights; but that is not to say that it extinguishes them.1
In my judgment the rule which requires a publication to be “limited” to avoid forfeiture of property rights in the material published is wholly inapposite here.2 There can be no limited publication of “news”; “news” as such is everyone’s property. Compare Chicago Record-Herald Co. v. Tribune Association, 7 Cir., 1921, 275 F. 797, 798. But what remains, after the news value of the words has passed, should belong exclusively to the author, or his assignees. The people who will buy a compilation of Admiral Rickover’s speeches, months and even years after they have been reported in the press, will do so because they prize the fruits of the author’s intellectual and literary efforts. There is nothing in the law which would compel this court to deprive the creator of the right to reap financial benefits from these efforts because, at the time of their creation, they had the added virtue of being newsworthy events of immediate public concern. Nor is there anything in the law which compels us to attach such a consequence to acts taken by an author to communicate to members of the public that element in his works which is properly theirs. It is a very grave matter for a court to pronounce the forfeiture of an author’s intellectual property. I cannot conclude that such a result is warranted here.
The plaintiff-appellant comes to the courts without having contributed one iota to the work it seeks to appropriate. It has not even gathered and compiled the speeches — on the contrary, it seeks to force Admiral Rickover to collect and present to it copies of all of them. This is a litigation which in its every aspect deserves to fail.

. Cf. Atlantic Monthly Co. v. Post Publishing Co., D.C.D.Mass.1928, 27 F.2d 556, dealing with a copyrighted magazine article which was also “political ‘news’ of the most important character,” id. at page 557. Such a copyright, in my view, should be no bar to bona fide contemporaneous quotation by the press, whether or not express permission to copy is given.

. This test is characteristically invoked where there has been a prepublication circulation of a literary or musical work for promotional purposes, e. g., Hirshon v. United Artists Corp., 1957, 100 U.S.App.D.C. 217, 243 F.2d 640; Ilyin v. Avon Publications, Inc., D.C.S.D.N.Y.1956, 144 F.Supp. 368. It is sometimes said that dissemination must be limited to some ascertained group or class, White v. Kimmell, 9 Cir., 1952, 193 F.2d 744, but even this requirement has been subject to qualification. See Werckmeister v. American Lithographic Co., 2 Cir., 1904, 134 F. 321, 68 L.R.A. 591. It is evident from these cases, and others treating the same questions, that the notion of “limit” rests upon the assumption that it is within the power of the author to prevent any circulation of his work. When he permits some dissemination, it becomes pertinent to inquire into his motives, to examine the extent of the distribution, and to consider the character of the recipients. Dissemination which is deemed too widespread is punished by forfeiture. Such inquiries, in my view, are quite irrelevant in the case of a leading public official, whose pronouncements on public matters should have — and are intended to have — wide dissemination as news.