Court Opinion

ID: 9479070
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:07:24.728886+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:48.534531
License: Public Domain

GRIESA, District Judge,
concurring in the result:
I concur with the result reached in the majority opinion, but have substantial disagreement with the opinion otherwise.
At the outset, a brief word about the development of the issues is in order.
The original claim of Rogers, as stated in the complaint, did not have any separate allegation about the title of the film as such. The complaint was directed against “the Film.” The first cause of action, claiming violation of Rogers’ right of publicity, was directed against the production and distribution of the Film. The second alleged that the Film depicted Rogers in a false light. The third cause of action, under the Lanham Act, was directed against the Film and its advertising. In her submissions on the summary judgment motion, Rogers focused mainly on the alleged wrongdoing of defendants in entitling the Film and in promoting and advertising the Film.
Judge Sweet’s opinion treated the issue as relating to “the Film’s title and screenplay.” He discussed promotion and advertising, but not as a significant separate claim. His holding was that the Film (including the title and the screenplay) is entitled to First Amendment protection and does not violate the Lanham Act or state law rules.
On appeal, the only issues raised by Rogers relate to the title and to the advertising and promotion. No claim is made regarding the screenplay. The only issue dealt with in the majority opinion is that relating to the title. I have no objection to this feature of the majority opinion. My objection is to how the issue is handled. Lanham Act
According to the majority, Judge Sweet’s Lanham Act ruling creates a broad immuni*1006ty which would prevent a remedy in instances of “flagrant deception.” To deal with this problem, the majority attempts to set out more precise standards by which lawful titles are to be differentiated from unlawful ones. It is said that the Lanham Act
... should be construed to apply to artistic works only where the public interest in avoiding consumer confusion outweighs the public interest in free expression.
To implement this vague and fluid test, the majority goes on to articulate two specific rules. First, titles which are artistically relevant to an underlying work but are “explicitly misleading” violate the Lanham Act. Second, titles which are artistically relevant but “ambiguous or only implicitly misleading” do not violate the Lanham Act.
I do not believe that anything in Judge Sweet’s opinion, sensibly read, would interfere with the protection of the public against “flagrant deception.” But whatever may be the problem with Judge Sweet's opinion, the cure offered by the majority is far worse than the ailment.
Judge Sweet’s reasoning can be briefly summarized as follows. Since the two main characters of the Film, Pippo and Amelia, are depicted as having made their living by imitating Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, there is, in a unique but entirely lawful manner, a reference to Ginger Rogers in the Film. The name “Ginger” is relevant to both the Film’s screenplay and its title. The screenplay and title are within the realm of artistic expression, and are thus entitled to an appropriately broad measure of protection under the First Amendment, a level of protection greater than would be accorded if this were commercial speech. The possibility that alternate avenues of expression might have been used does not create a valid Lanham Act claim. The judge noted that there is nothing in the record to suggest an intention to use Ginger Rogers’ name to deceive the public into coming to the movie under the mistaken belief that it was about the true Rogers and Astaire. 695 F.Supp. 113, 120-21.
The essential points of Judge Sweet’s rationale are echoed in the majority opinion, which states that the title “is an integral element of the film and the film-maker’s artistic expression,” and that “the expressive element of titles requires more protection than the labeling of ordinary commercial products.” However, the majority opinion expresses the concern that the district court’s ruling would create “a nearly absolute privilege for movie titles,” because of what are thought to be broad statements about the First Amendment protection accorded to artistic speech as distinct from commercial speech.
In my view, this concern is unfounded. Judge Sweet’s discussion of First Amendment protection for artistic expression was his basis for deciding this case. He did not purport to write a treatise or attempt to say how various other cases with different facts should be treated. This is not to say that the ruling would not, justifiably, have some general precedential effect. It is undoubtedly true that most titles which are artistically relevant to the underlying work would be protected under the First Amendment from Lanham Act claims. However, Judge Sweet did not purport to write the law covering all possible situations.
The problem of an overly expansive ruling really lies with the majority opinion and its unfortunate attempt to establish a rule based on the asserted difference between explicitly misleading titles and those which are ambiguous or only implicitly misleading.
All the judges involved here agree that the title “Ginger and Fred” does not violate the Lanham Act. Although the title may mean different things to different people, the artistic relationship between the title and the Film protects both from the strictures of the statute.
However, this unique case would seem to be an inappropriate vehicle for fashioning a general rule of the kind announced by the majority. The unusual circumstances here do not provide a valid illustration of the general proposition (which I regard as dubious indeed) that there is a legal boundary between implicitly misleading titles and ex*1007plicitly misleading ones. The majority opinion does not use the facts of this case to define the asserted distinction, but seeks to give substance to the announced rule through the use of certain hypothetical examples.
The majority attempts to give illustrations of titles which would be artistically relevant but explicitly misleading. It is said that if the titles “Nimmer on Copyright” and “Jane Fonda’s Workout Book” were used in a manner which was “false as applied to the underlying work” there would be liability under the Lanham Act. But these examples really go nowhere. It is not specified what the underlying works would be where such titles would be false but “artistically relevant.” The simple fact is that if either of these titles was used in connection with some bogus work, it would be a simple case of the copying of a legally protected title. See Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. v. Majestic Pictures Corp., 70 F.2d 310 (2d Cir.1934); Orion Pictures Co. v. Dell Publishing Co., 471 F.Supp. 392 (S.D.N.Y.1979). Thus the illustrations have nothing whatever to do with the kind of problem under discussion here.
The majority opinion states that, in the present case, the title would have been explicitly misleading if it had been “The True Life Story of Ginger and Fred.” Of course, this awkward assemblage could hardly be expected to come under the consideration of a director such as Fellini. If, by some strange circumstance, it had been used, and if the majority opinion’s legal doctrine were applied to it, lawyers might debate extensively about whether it was indeed misleading, and if so, whether it fell into the explicit or the implicit category. But the fact is that the example does not pose a realistic legal problem.
Coming to the other branch of the rule created by the majority, the opinion attempts to give illustrations of titles which would be artistically relevant and implicitly misleading — i.e., which “impliedly suggest that the named celebrity had endorsed the work or had a role in producing it.” The examples given are the song “Bette Davis Eyes” and the film “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.” But these examples in no way illustrate the majority’s proposition. No one can seriously think that these titles imply or suggest that Bette Davis or James Dean endorsed or had a role in producing the song or the film.
In my view, the rule of the majority opinion, involving the two purported categories, is not well founded. It should be left to future courts, dealing with real cases, to determine if there are to be exceptions to the First Amendment protection which would seem to be generally afforded to artistically relevant titles. To say the least, the hypothetical in the majority opinion are a poor basis for arriving at serious legal propositions. When and if an actual case arises, it may not fit within either of the categories posited by the majority. Also, it is most likely that the distinction between explicitly and implicitly misleading titles will prove to be unsound and unworkable.
State Law Claims
A respectable common sense approach to choice of law problems is simply to avoid them when it is clear that the law of the various jurisdictions under consideration is the same. There is a sufficient discussion of the law dealing with the right to publicity in Anderson v. Fisher Broadcasting, 300 Or. 452, 712 P.2d 803, 812 (1986), to indicate that the law of Oregon on this subject is basically no different from that expressed in the New York, California and federal decisions relied on by Judge Sweet and in the majority opinion. Judge Sweet sensibly avoided a lengthy excursion into the subject of choice of law.