Court Opinion

ID: 9418368
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:23:15.215456+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:02.085649
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Pitney
delivered the opinion of the court.
The parties are competitors in the gathering and distribution of news and its publication for profit in newspapers throughout the United States. The Associated Press, which was complainant in the District Court, is a cooperative organization, incorporated under the Membership Corporations Law of the State of New York, its members being individuals who are either proprietors or representatives of about 950 daily newspapers published in all parts of the United States. That a corporation may be organized under that act for the purpose of gathering news for the use and benefit of its-members and for publication in newspapers owned or represented«by them, is recognized by an amendment enacted in 1901 (Laws N. Y. 1901, c. 436). Complainant gathers'in all parts of the world, by means of various instrumentalities of its own, by exchange with its members, apd by other appropriate means, news and intelligence of current and recent events of interest to newspaper readers and distributes it daily to its members for publication in their newspapers. The. cost of the service, amounting approximately to $3,500,000 per annum, is assessed upon the members and becomes a part of their costs of operation, to be recouped, presumably with profit, through *230the publication of their several newspapers. Under complainant’s by-laws each member agrees upon assuming membership that news received through complainant’s service is received exclusively for publication in a particular newspaper, language, and place specified in the certificate of membership, that no other use of it shall be permitted, and that no member shall furnish or permit anyone in his employ or connected with his newspaper to furnish any of complainant’s news in advance of publication to any person not a member. And each member is required to gather the local news of his district and supply it to the Associated Press and to no one else.
Defendant is a corporation organized under the laws of the State of New Jersey, whose business is the gathering and selling of news to its customers and clients, consisting of newspapers published throughout the United States, under contracts by which they pay certain amounts at stated times for defendant’s service. It has wide-spread news-gathering agéncies; the cost of its operations amounts, it is said, to more than $2,000,000 per annum; and it serves about 400 newspapers located in the various cities of the United States and abroad, a few of which are represented, also, in the membership of the Associated Press.
The parties are in the keenest competition between themselves in the distribution of news throughout the United States; and so, as a rule, are the newspapers that they serve, in their several districts.
Complainant in its bill, defendant in its answer, have set forth in almost identical terms the rather obvious circumstances and' conditions under which their business is conducted. The value of the service, and of. the news furnished, depends upon the promptness of transmission, as well as upon the accuracy and impartiality of the news; it being essential that the news be transmitted to members or subscribers as early or earlier than similar information can be furnished to competing newspapers *231by other news services, and that the news furnished by each agency shall not be furnished to newspapers which do not contribute to the expense of gathering it. And further, to quote from the answer: “Prompt knowledge and publication of world-wide news is essential to the conduct of a modern newspaper, and by reason of the enormous expense incident to the gathering and distribution of such news, the only practical way in which a proprietor of a newspaper can obtain the same is, either through cooperation with a considerable number of other newspaper proprietors in the work of collecting and distributing such news, and the equitable division with them of the expenses thereof, or by the purchase of such news from some existing agency engaged in that business.”
The bill was filed to restrain' the pirating of complainant’s news by defendant in three ways: First, by bribing employees of newspapers published by complainant’s members to furnish Associated. Press news to defendant before publication, for transmission by telegraph and telephone to defendant’s clients for publication by them; Second, by inducing Associated Press members to violate its by-laws and permit defendant to obtain news before publication; and Third, by copying news from bulletin boards- and from, early editions of complainant’s newspapers and selling this, either bodily or after rewriting -it, to defendant’s customers.
The District Court, upon consideration of the bill and answer, with voluminous affidavits on both sides, granted & preliminary injunction under the first and second heads; but refused at that stage to restrain the systematic practice admittedly pursued by defendant, of taking news bodily from the bulletin boards and early editions of complainant’s newspapers and selling it as its own. The court expressed itself as satisfied that this practice amounted to unfair trade, but as the legal question was *232one of first impression it considered that the allowance of an injunction should await the outcome of an appeal. 240 Fed. Rep. 983, 990. Both parties having appealed, the Circuit Court of Appeals sustained the injunction order so far as it went, and upon complainant’s appeal modified it and remanded the cause with directions to issue an injunction also against any bodily taking of the words or substance of complainant’s news until its commercial value as news had passed away. 245 Fed. Rep. 244, 253. The present writ of certiorari was then allowed. 245 U. S. 644.
The only matter that has been argued before us. is whether defendant may lawfully be restrained from appropriating news taken from bulletins issued by complainant or any of its members, or from newspapers published by them, for the purpose of selling it to defendant’s clients. Complainant asserts that defendant’s admitted course of conduct in this regard both violates complainant’s property right in the news and constitutes unfair competition iii business. And notwithstanding the case has proceeded only to the stage of a preliminary injunction, we have deemed it proper to consider the underlying questions, since they go to the very merits of the action and are presented upon facts that are not in dispute. As presented in argument, these questions are: 1. Whether there is any property in news; 2. Whether, if there be property in news collected for the purpose of being published, it survives the instant of its publication in the first newspaper to which it is communicated by the news-gatherer; and 3. Whether defendant’s admitted course of conduct in appropriating for commercial use matter taken from bulletins or early editions of Associated Press publications constitutes unfair competition in trade.
The federal jurisdiction was invoked because of diversity of citizenship, not upon the ground that the suit arose under the copyright or other laws of the United *233States. Complainant’s news matter is not copyrighted. It is said that it could not, in practice, be copyrighted, because of the large number of dispatches that are sent daily; and, according to complainant’s contention, news is not within the operation of the copyright act. Defendant, while apparently conceding this, nevertheless invokes, the analogies of the law of literary property and copyright, insisting as its principal contention that, assuming complainant has a right of property in its news, it can be maintained (unless the copyright act be complied with) only by being kept secret and confidential, and that upon the publication with complainant’s consent of uncopyrighted news by any of complainant’s members in a newspaper or upon a bulletin board, the right of property is lost, and the subsequent use of the news by the public or by defendant for any purpose whatever becomes lawful.
A preliminary objection to the form in which the suit is brought may be disposed of at the outset. It is said that the Circuit Court of Appeals granted relief upon considerations applicable to particular members of the Associated Press, and that this was erroneous because the suit was brought by complainant as a corporate entity, and not by its members; the argument being that their interests cannot be protected in this procéeding any more than the individual rights of a stockholder can be enforced in an action brought by the corporation. From the averments of the bill, however, it is plain that the suit in substance was brought for the benefit of complainant’s members, and that they would be proper parties, and, except for their numbers, perhaps necessary parties. Complainant is a proper party to conduct the suit as representing their interest; and since no specific objection, based upon the want of parties, appears to have been made below, we will treat the objection as waived. See Equity Rules 38, 43, 44.
*234In considering the general question of property in news matter, it is necessary to recognize its dual character, distinguishing between the substance of the information and the particular form or collocation of words in which the writer has communicated it.
No doubt news articles often possess a literary quality, and are the subject of literary property at the common law; nor do we question that such an article, as a literary production, is the subject of copyright by the'terms of the act as it now stands. In an early case at the circuitMr. Justice Thompson held in effect that a newspaper was not within the protection of the copyright acts of 1790 and 1802 (Clayton v. Stone, 2 Paine, 382; 5 Fed. Cas. No. 2872). But the present act is broader; it provides that the works for which copyright may be secured shall include “all the writings of an author,” and specifically mentions “periodicals, including newspapers.” Act of March 4, 1909, c. 320, §§ 4 and 5, 35 Stat. 1075, 1076. Evidently this admits to copyright a contribution to a newspaper, notwithstanding it also may convey news; and such is the practice of the copyright office, as the newspapers of the day bear witness. See Copyright Office Bulletin No. 15 (1917), pp. 7, 14,16-17.
But the news element — the information respecting current events contained in the literary production — is not the creation • f the writer, but is a report of matters that Ordinarily are vubVici juris; it is the history of the day. It is not to be s ipposed that the framers of the Constitution, when they empowered Congress “to promote the progress of science' and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries” (Const., Art I, § 8, par. 8), intended to confer upon one who might happen to be the first to report a historic event the exclusive right for,any period to spread the knowledge of it.
We need spend no time, however, upon the general *235question of property in news matterCat common law, or the application of the copyright act, since it seems to us the case must turn upon the question of unfair competition in business. And, in our opinión, this does not depend upon any general right of property analogous to the common-law right of the proprietor of an unpublished work to prevent its publication without his consent; nor is it foreclosed- by showing that the benefits of the copyright act have been waived. We are dealing here not with restrictions upon publication but with the very facilities and processes of publication. The peculiar value of news is in the spreading of it while it is fresh; and it is evident that a valuable property interest in the news, as news, cannot be maintained by. keeping it secret. Besides, exéept for matters improperly disclosed, or published in breach of trust or confidence, or in violation of law, none of which is involved in this branch of the case, the news of current events may be regarded as common property What we are concerned with is the business of making it known to the world, in which both parties to the present suit are engaged. That business consists in maintaining a prompt, sure, steady, and reliable service designed to place the daily events of the world at the breakfast table of the millions at a price that, while of trifling moment to each reader, is sufficient in the aggregate to afford compensation for the cost of gathering and distributing it, with the added profit so necessary as an incentive to effective action in the commercial world. The service thus performed for newspaper readers is not only innocent but extremely useful in itself, and indubitably constitutes a legitimate business. The parties are competitors in this field; and, on fundamental principles, applicable here as elsewhere, when the rights or privileges of the one are liable to conflict with those of the other, each party is under a duty so to conduct its own business as not unnecessarily or unfairly to injure *236that of the other. Hitchman Coal & Coke Co. v. Mitchell, 245 U. S. 229, 254.
Obviously, the question of what is unfair competition in business must be determined with particular reference to the character and circumstances of the business. The question here is not so much the rights of either party as against the public but their rights as between themselves. See Morison v. Moat, 9 Hare, 241, 258. And although we may and do assume that neither party has any remaining property interest’ as against the public in uncopyrighted news matter after the moment of its first publication, it by no means follows that there is no remaining property interest in it as between themselves. For, to both of them alike, news matter, however little susceptible of ownership or dominion in the absolute sense, is stock in trade, to be gathered at the cost of enterprise, organization, skill, labor, and money, and to be distributed and sold to those who will pay money for it, as for any other merchandise. Regarding the news, therefore, as but the material out of which both parties are seeking to make profits at the same time and in the same field, we hardly can fail to recognize that for this purpose, and as between them, it must be regarded as quasi property, irrespective of the rights of either as against the public.
In.order to sustain the jurisdiction of equity over the controversy, we need not affirm any general and absolute property in the news as such. The rule that a court of equity concerns itself only in the protection of property rights treats any civil right of a pecuniary nature as a property right (In re Sawyer, 124 U. S. 200, 210; In re Debs, 158 U. S. 564, 593); and the'right to acquire property by honest labor or the conduct of a lawful business •is as much entitled to protection as the right to guard property already acquired. Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33, 37-38; Brennan v. United Hatters, 73 N. J. L. 729, 742; *237Barr v. Essex Trades Council, 53 N. J. Eq. 101. It is this right that furnishes the basis of the jurisdiction in the ordinary case of unfair competition.
The question, whether one who has gathered general information or news at pains and expense for the purpose of subsequent publication through the press has such an interest in its publication as may be protected from interference, has been raised many times, although never, perhaps, in the precise form in which it is now presented.
Board of Trade v. Christie Grain & Stock Co., 198 U. S. 236, 250, related to the distribution of quotations of prices on dealings upon a board of trade, which were collected by plaintiff and communicated on confidential terms to numerous persons under a contract not to make them public. This court held that, apart from certain special objections that Were overruled, plaintiff’s collection of quotations was entitled to the protection of the law; that, like á trade secret, plaintiff might keep to itself the work done at its expense, and did not lose its right by communicating the result to persons, even if many, in confidential relations to itself, under a contract not to make it public; and that strangers should be restrained from getting at the knowledge by inducing a breach of trust.
■In National Tel. News Co. v. Western Union Tel. Co., 119 Fed. Rep. 294, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit dealt with news matter gathered and transmitted by a telegraph company, and consisting merely of a notation of current events having but a transient value due to quick transmission and distribution; and, while declaring that this was not copyrightable although printed on a tape by tickers in the offices of the recipients, and that it was a commercial not a literary product, nevertheless held that the business of gathering and communicating the news — the service of purveying it — was a legitimate business, meeting a distinctive commercial want and adding to the facilities of the business *238world, and partaking of the nature of property in a sense that entitled it to the protection of a court of equity against piracy.
Other cases are cited, but none that we deem it necessary to mention..
• Not only do the acquisition and transmission of news reqúire elaborate organization and a large expenditure of money, shill, and effort; not only has it an exchange value to the gatherer, dependent chiefly upon its novelty and freshness, the regularity of the service, its reputed reliability and thoroughness^ and its adaptability to the public needs; but also, as is evident, the news has ah exchange value to one who can misappropriate it.
The peculiar features of the case arise from the fact that, while novelty and freshness form so important an element in the success of the business, the very processes of distribution and publication necessarily occupy a good deal of time. Complainant’s service, as well as defendant’s, is a daily service to daily newspapers; most of the foreign news reaches this country at the Atlantic seaboard, principally at the City of New York, and because of this, and of time differentials due to the earth’s rotation, the distribution of news matter throughout the country is principally from east to west; and, since in speed the telegraph and telephone easily outstrip the rotation of the earth, it is a simple matter for defendant to take complainant’s news from bulletins or early editions of complainant’s members in the eastern cities and at the mere cost of telegraphic transmission cause it to be published in western papers issued at least as early as those served by complainant. Besides this, and irrespective of time differentials, irregularities in telegraphic transmission on different lines, and the normal consumption of time in printing and distributing the newspaper, result in permitting pirated news to.be placed in the hands of defendant’s .readers sometimes simultaneously with the service *239of competing Associated Press papers,, occasionally even earlier.
Defendant insists that when, with, the sanction and approval of complainant, and as the result of the.use of its news for the very purpose for which it is distributed, a portion of complainant’s members communicate it to the general public by posting it upon bulletin boards so that all may réád, or by issuing it to newspapers and distributing it indiscriminately, complainant no longer has the right to control the use to be made of it; that when it thus reaches the light of day it becomes the common possession of all to whom it is accessible; and that any purchaser of a newspaper has the right to communicate the intelligence! which it contains to anybody and for any purpose, even for the purpose of selling it for profit to newspapers published for profit in competition with complainant’s members.
The fault in the reasoning lies in applying as a test the right of the complainant as against the public, instead of considering the rights of complainant and defendant, competitors in business, as between themselves. The right of the purchaser of a single newspaper to spread'knowledge of its contents gratuitously, for any legitimate purpose not unreasonably interfering with complainant’s right to make merchandise of it, may be admitted; but to transmit that news for commercial use, in competition with complainant — which is what defendant has7 done and seeks to justify — is a very different matter. In doing this defend^ ant, by its very act, admits that it is taking material that has been acquired by complainant as the result of organization and the expenditure of labor, skill, and money, and which is salable by complainant for money, and that defendant in appropriating it and selling it as its own is endeavoring to reap where it has not sown, and by disposing of it to newspapers that are competitors of complainant’s members is' appropriating to itself the harvest *240of those who have sown. Stripped of all disguises, the process amounts to-an unauthorized interference with the normal operation of' complainant’s legitimate business precisely at the point where the profit is to be reaped, in order to divert a material portion of the profit from those who have, earned it,to those who have not; with special advantage to defendant in the competition because of the fact that it is not burdened with any part of the expense of gathering the news. The transaction speaks for itself, and a court of equity ought not to hesitate long in characterizing it .as unfair competition in business.
The underlying principle is much the same as that which lies at the base of the equitable theory of consideration in the law of trusts — that he who has fairly paid the price should have the beneficial use of the property. Pom. Eq. Jur., § 981. It .is no answer to say that complainant spends its money for that which is too fugitive or evanescent to be the subject of property; That might, and for the purposes of the discussion we are assuming that 'it would, furnish an answer in á common-law controversy. But in a court of equity, where the question is one of unfair competition, if that which complainant haá acquired fairly at substantial cost may be sold fairly at substantial profit,, a competitor who is misappropriating it for the purpose of disposing of it to his own profit and to the disadvantage of complainant cannot be heard to say that it is too fugitive or evanescent to be regarded as property. It has all the attributes of property necessary for determining that a misappropriation of it by a competitor is unfair competition because contrary to good conscience.
The contention that the news is abandoned to the public for all purposes when published in the first newspaper is untenable. Abandonment is a question of intent, and the entire organization of the Associated Press negatives such a purpose. The cost of the service would be prohibitive if the reward were to be so limited. No single *241newspaper, no small group of newspapers, could sustain the expenditure. Indeed, it is one of the most obvious results of defendant’s theory that, by permitting indiscriminate publication by anybody and everybody for purposes of profit in competition with the news-gatherer, it would render publication profitless, or so little profitable as in effect to cut off the service by rendering the cost prohibitive in comparison with the return. The practical needs and requirements of the business are reflected in complainant’s by-laws which have been referred to. Their effect is that publication by each member must be deemed not by any means an abandonment of the. news to the world for any and all purposes,'but a publication for limited purposes; for the benefit of the readers of the bulletin or the newspaper as such; not for the purpose of making merchandise of it as news, with the result of depriving complainant’s other members of their reasonable opportunity to obtain just returns for their expenditures.
It is to be observed that the view we adopt does not result in giving to complainant the right to monopolize. either the gathering or the distribution of the news, or, without complying with the copyright act, to prevent the reproduction of its news articles; but only postpones participation by complainant’s competitor in the processes of distribution and reproduction of news that it has not gathered, and only to the extent necessary to prevent that competitor from reaping the fruits of complainant’s efforts and expenditure, to fhe partial exclusion of complainant, and in violation of the principle that underlies the maxim sic utere tuo, etc.
It is said that the elemen+s of unfair competition are lacking because there is no attempt by defendant to palm off its goods as those of the complainant, characteristic of the most familiar, if not the most typical, cases of unfair competition. Howe - Scale Co. v. Wyckotf, Seamans & Benedict, 198 U. S. 118, 140. But we cannot concede that *242the right to equitable relief is confined to that class of cases. In the present case the fraud upon complainant’s rights is more direct and obvious. Regarding news matter as the mere material from which these two competing parties are endeavoring to make money, and treating it, therefore, as quasi property for the. purposes of their business because they are both selling it as such, defendant’s conduct differs from the ordinary case of unfair competition in trade principally in this that, instead of selling its own goods as those of complainant, it substitutes misappropriation in the place of misrepresentation, and sells complainant’s goods as its own.
Besides the misappropriation, there are elements 'of imitation, of false pretense, in defendant’s practices. The device of rewriting complainant’s news articles, frequently resorted to, carries its own comment.. The habitual failure to givé credit to complainant for that which is taken is significant. Indeed, the entire system of appropriating complainant’s news and transmitting it as a commercial product to defendant’s clients and patrons amounts to a false representation to them and to their newspaper readers that the news transmitted is the result of defendant’s own investigation in the field. But these elements, although accentuating the wrong, are not the essence of it. It is something more than tlfé advantage of celebrity of which complainant is being deprived.
The doctrine of unclean hands is invoked as a bar to relief; it. being insisted that defendant’s practices against which complainant seeks an injunction are not different from the practice attributed to complainant, of utilizing defendant’s news published by its subscribers. At this point it becomes necessary to consider a distinction that is drawn by complainant, ancl, as we understand it, was recognized, by defendant also in the submission of proofs in the District Court, between two kinds of use that may be made by one news agency of news taken from the *243bulletins and newspapers of the other. The first is the bodily appropriation of á statement of fact or a news article, with or without rewriting, but without independent investigation or other expense. This fomCof pirating was found by both courts to have been pursued by defendant systematically with respect to complainant’s news, and against it the Circuit Court of Appeals granted an injunction. This practice complainant denies having pursued, and the denial was sustained by the finding of the District Court. It is not contended by defendant that the finding can be set aside, upon the proofs as they now stand. The other use is to take the news of a rival agency as a “tip” to be investigated, and if verified by independent investigation the news thus gathered is sold. This practice complainant admits that if has pursued and still is willing that defendant shall employ.
Both courts held that complainant could not be debarred on the ground of unclean hands upon the score of pirating defendant’s news, because not shown to bé guilty of sanctioning this practice.
As to securing “tips” from a competing news agency, the District Court (240 Fed. Rep. 991, 995), while not sanctioning the practice,. found .that both parties had adopted it in accordance with common business usage, in the belief that their conduct was technically, lawful, and hence did not find nfit any sufficient ground for áttribut- „ ing unclean hands to complainant. The Circuit Court of Appeals (245 Fed. Rep. 247) found that the tip habit, though discouraged" by complainant, was incurably journalistic,” and that there was “no difficulty in discriminating between the utilization of ‘tips’ and the bodily appropriation of another’s labor in accumulating and stating information.” ,
.We are inclined to think a distinction may be drawn between the utilization of tips and the bodily appropriation of news matter, either in its original, form or after *244rewriting and without independent investigation and verification; whatever may appear at the final hearing, the proofs as they now stand recognize such a distinction; both parties avowedly recognize the practice of taking tips, and. neither party alleges it to be .unlawful or to amount to unfair competition.in business. In a line of . English cases a somewhat analogous practice has been held not to amount to an infringement of the copyright of a directory or other book containing compiled information. In Kelly v. Morris, L. R. 1 Eq. 697, 701, 702, Vice Chancellor Sir William Page Wood (afterwards Lord Hatherly), dealing with such a case, said that defendant was “not entitled to také one word of the informatión previously published without independently working out the matter for himself, so as to arrive at the same result -from the same common sources of information,, and the only use that he can legitimately, make of a previous publication is to verify his own calculations and results when obtained.” This was followed by Vice Chancellor Giffard in Morris v. Ashbee, L. R. 7 Eq. 34, where he said: “In a case such as this no one has a right to take the results of the labour and expense incurred by another for the purposes of a rival publication, and thereby save himself the expense and labour of working out and arriving at these results by some independent road.” A similar view was adopted by Lord Chancellor Hatherly and the former Vice Chancellor, then Giffard, L. J., in Pike v. Nicholas, L. R. 5 Ch. App. Cas. 251, and shortly afterwards by the latter judge in Morris v. Wright, L. R. 5 Ch. App. Cas. 279, 287, where he said, commenting upon Pike v. Nicholas: “It was a perfectly legitimate course for the defendant to refer to the plaintiff’s book, and if, taking that book as his guide, he went to the original authorities and compiled his book from them, he made no unfair or improper use of the plaintiff’s book; and so here, if the fact be that Mr. Wright used the plaintiff’s *245book in order to guide himself to the persons on whom it would be worth his while to call, and for no other purpose, he made a perfectly legitimate use of the plaintiff’s, book.”
A like distinction was recognized by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Edward Thompson Co. v. American Law Book Co., 122 Fed. Rep. 922, and in West Publishing Co. v. Edward Thompson Co., 176 Fed. Rep. 833, 838.
In the case before us, in the present state of the pleadings and proofs, we need go no further than to hold, as we do, that the admitted pursuit by complainant of the practice of. taking news items published by defendant’s subscribers as tips to be investigated, and, if verified, the result of the investigation to be sold — the practice having been followed by defendant also, and by news agencies .generally — is not shown to be such as to constitute an unconscientious or inequitable attitude towards its adversary so as to fix upon complainant the taint of unclean ■ hands, and debar it on this ground from the relief to which it is. otherwise entitled.
There is some criticism of the injunction that was directed by the District Court' upon the going down of the mandate from the Circuit Court of Appeals. In brief, it restrains any taking or gainfully using of the complainant’s news, either bodily or in substance, from bulletins issued by the complainant or any of its members, or from editions of their newspapers, “until its commercial value as news to the complainant and all of its members has passed away.” The part complained of is the clause we have italicized; but if this be indefinite, it is no more so than the criticism. Perhaps it would be better that the terms of the injunction be made specific, and so framed as to confine the restraint to an extent consistent with the reasonable..protection of complainant’s newspapers, each in its own area and for a specified time after its *246publication, against the competitive use of pirated news by defendant’s customers.. But the case presents practical difficulties; and we have not the materials, either in the way of a definite suggestion of amendment, or in the way of proofs, upon which to frame a specific injunction; hence, while not expressing approval of the form adopted by the District Court, we decline to modify it at this preliminary stage of the case, and will leave that court t<|. deal with thu matter upon appropriate application made to it for the purpose.
The decree of the Circuit Court of. Appeals will be

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice Clabke took ño part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Mr. Justice Holmes:
When an uncopyrighted combination of words is published there is no general right to forbid other people repeating them — in other words there is no property in the combination or in the thoughts or facts that the words express. Property, a creation of law, does not arise from value, although exchangeable — a matter of fact. Many exchangeable values may be destroyed intentionally without compensation. Property depends upon exclusion by law from interference, and a person is not excluded from using, any combination of words merely because someone has used it before, even, if it took labor and genius to make it. If a given person is to be prohibited from making the use of words that his neighbors . are free to make some other ground must be found. One such ground is vaguely expressed in the phrase unfair trade. This means that the words are repeated by a competitor in business in such a way ¿s. to convey a misrepresentation that materially injures the person who first used them, by appropriating credit of some' kind *247which the first user has earned. The ordinary case is a representation by device, appearance, or other indirection that the defendant’s goods come from the plaintiff. But the only reason why it is actionable to make such a representation is that it tends to give the defendant an advantage in his competition with the plaintiff and that it' is thought undesirable that an advantage should be gained in that way.' Apart from that the defendant may use such unpatented devices and uncopyrighted combinations of words as he likes. The ordinary case, I say, is palming off the defendant’s product as the plaintiff’s, but the same evil may follow from the opposite falsehood — from saying, whether in words or by implication^ that the plaintiff’s product is the defendant’s, and that, it seems to me, is what h^s happened here.
Fresh news is got only by enterprise and expense. To produce such news as it is produced by the defendant represents by implication that it has been acquired by the defendant’s enterprise and at its expense. When it comes from one of the great news-collecting agencies like the Associated Press, the source generally is indicated, plainly importing that credit; and that such a representa-^ tion is implied may be inferred with some confidence, from the unwillingness of the defendant to give the credit and tell , the truth. If the plaintiff produces the news at the same time that the defendant does, the defendant’s presentation impliedly denies to the plaintiff the credit of collecting the facts and assumes that credit to the defendant. If. the plaintiff is lateA in western cities it naturally will be supposed to have obtained its information from the defendant. The falsehood is a little more subtle, the injury a little more indirect, than in ordinary cases of unfáir trade, but I think that the principle that ^condemns the one condemns the other. It is a question of how strong an infusión of fraud is necessary to turn a flavor into a poison., The dose seems to me strong *248enough here to need & remedy from the law. But as, in my view, the only ground of" complaint that can be recognized without legislation is the implied misstatement, it can be corrected by stating the truth; and a suitable acknowledgment of the source is all that the plaintiff can require. I think that within the limits recognized by the decision of the Court the defendant should be enjoined from publishing news obtained from the Associated Press for hours after publication by the plaintiff unless it gives express credit to the Associated Press; the number of hours and the form of acknowledgment to be settled by the District Court.
Mr. Justice McKenna concurs in this opinion.