Court Opinion

ID: 9443381
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:19:03.593089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:28.376933
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge,
(concurring).
1. I agree, of course, that, whether by way of contract or tort, plaintiff (absent his consent to the contrary) is entitled to prevention of the publication, as his, of a garbled version of his uncopyrighted product. This is not novel doctrine: Byron obtained an injunction from an English court restraining the publication of a book purporting to contain his poems only, but which included some not of his authorship.7 American courts, too, have enforced such a right.8 Those courts have also enjoined the use by another of the characteristics of an author of repute in such manner as to deceive buyers into erroneously believing that they were buying a work of that author.9 Those courts, moreover, have granted injunctive relief in these circumstances : An artist sells one of his works to the defendant who substantially changes it and then represents the altered matter to the public as that artist’s product. Whether the work is copyrighted or not, the established rule is that, even if the contract with the artist expressly authorizes reasonable modifications (e. g., where a novel or stage play is sold for adaptation as a movie), it is an actionable wrong to hold out the artist as author of a version which substantially departs from the original.10 Under the authorities, the defendant’s conduct here, as my colleagues say, may also be considered a kind of “unfair competition” or “passing off.”11 The irreparable harm, justifying an injunction, becomes apparent when one thinks what would be the result if the collected speeches of Stalin were published under the name of Senator Robert Taft, or the poems of Ella Wheeler Wilcox as those of T. S. Eliot.
*5902. If, on the remand, the evidence should favor the plaintiff, I think we should grant him further relief, i. e., an injunction against publication by the defendant of any truncated version of his work, even if it does not bear plaintiff’s name. I would rest the grant of that relief on an interpretation of the contract.
Plaintiff, in asking for such relief, relied in part not on the contract but on the doctrine of artists’ “moral right,” a compendious label of a “bundle of rights”12 enforced in many “civil law” countries.13 Able legal thinkers,14 pointing out that American courts have already recognized a considerable -number of the rights in that “bundle,” have urged that our courts use the “moral right” symbol. Those thinkers note that the label “right of privacy” served to bring to the attention of our courts a common center of perspectives previously separated in the decisions,15 and that the use of that label induced further novel and valuable judicial perspectives.
To this suggestion there are these objections: (a) “Moral right” seems to indicate to some persons something not legal, something meta-legal. (b) The “moral right” doctrine, as applied in some countries, includes very extensive rights which courts in some American jurisdictions are not yet prepared to acknowledge;16 as a result, the phrase “moral right” seems to have frightened some of those courts to such an extent that they have unduly narrowed artists’ rights.17 (c) Finally, it is not always an unmitigated boon to devise and employ such a common name. As we have said elsewhere:18 “A new name; a novel label expressive of a new generalization, can have immense consequences. Emerson said, ‘Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.’ Confronted with disturbing variety, we often feel a tension from which a generalization, an abstraction, relieves us. It serves as a de-problemizer, aiding us to pass from an unstable, problematical, situation to a more stable one. It satisfies a craving, meets what Emerson called ‘the insatiable demand of harmony in man,’ a demand which translates itself into the so-called ‘law’ of ‘the least effort.’ But the solution of a problem through the invention of a new generalization is no final solution: The new generalization breeds new problems. Stressing a newly perceived likeness between many particular happenings which had theretofore seemed unlike, it may blind us to continuing unlikenesses. Hypnotized by a label which emphasizes identities, we may be led to ignore differences. * * * For, with its stress on *591uniformity, an abstraction or generalization tends to become totalitarian in its attitude towards uniqueness.” 19
Without rejecting the doctrine of “moral right,” I think that, in the light of the foregoing, we should not rest decision on that doctrine where, as here, it is not necessary to do so.

. Byron v. Johnston, 2 Mer. 28, 35 Eng. Rep. 851. See also Ridge v. English Illustrated Magazine, 29 T.L.R. 582.

. See Clemens v. Belford, Clark & Co., D.C.N.D.Ill., 14 F. 728, 730-731; D’Altomonte v. New York Herald, 154 App. Div. 453, 139 N.Y.S. 200, modified 208 N. Y. 695, 102 N.E. 1101; Ben Oliel v. Press Publishing Co., 251 N.Y. 250, 167 N.E. 432.

. Estes v. Williams, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 21 F. 189; Fisher v. Star Co., 231 N.Y. 414, 132 N.E. 133, 19 A.L.R. 937; See also Prouty v. National Broadcasting Co., D.C.Mass., 26 F.Supp. 265; cf. Gardella v. Log Cabin Products Co., 2 Cir., 89 F.2d 891, 895. Cf. Hogg v. Kirby, 32 Eng.Rep. 336.

. Packard v. Fox Film Corp., 207 App. Div. 311, 202 N.Y.S. 164; see also Curwood v. Affiliated Distributors, Inc., D.C.S.D.N.Y., 283 F. 219, 222; Drummond v. Altemus, C.C.E.D.Pa., 60 F. 338; cf. Archbold v. Sweet, 172 Eng.Rep. 947; Royle v. Dillingham, 53 Misc. 383, 384, 104 N.Y.S. 783; Lee v. Gibbings, 67 L.T. R. 263; Cox v. Cox, 68 Eng.Rep. 1211, 1214; Annot. Unfair Competition — Art— Literature, 19 A.L.R. 949.

. See, e.g., Uproar Co. v. National Broadcasting Co., D.C.Mass., 8 F.Supp. 358; Fisher v. Star Co., 231 N.Y. 414, 132 N. E. 133, 19 A.L.R. 937; Estes v. Williams, C.C.S.D.N.Y., 21 F. 189; Royle v. Dillingham, 53 Misc. 383, 104 N.Y.S. 783; cf. Packard v. Fox Film Co., supra.
*590The unfair competition doctrine has yielded some judge-made monopolies of doubtful value to the public. See, e. g., Standard Brands v. Smidler, 2 Cir., 151 F.2d 34, 38-43; General Time Instrument Corp. v. U. S. Time Corporation, 2 Cir., 165 F.2d 853, 855, dissenting opinion; Triangle Publications v. Rohrlich, 2 Cir., 167 F.2d 969, 980, dissenting opinion; cf. Cliafee, Unfair Competition, 53 Harv.L.Rev. (1940) 1289, 1318-19. But the application of that doctrine here is obviously in the public interest.

. See Rohmer v. Commissioner, 2 Cir., 153 F.2d 61, 63; Standard Oil Co. v. Clark, 2 Cir., 163 F.2d 917, 930-939.

. See Roeder, Doctrine of Moral Right, 53 Harv.D.Rev. 554, 565-572; Ladas, International Protection of Literary and Artistic Property, Vol. I, 575 et seq.; Katz, Doctrine of Moral Right, 24 So. Cal.L.Rev. 375 (1951).

. See citations in preceding footnote.

. Warren and Brandeis, The Law of Privacy, 4 Harv.L.Rev. (1890) 193.

. See, e.g., Katz, The Doctrine of Moral Right, 24 So.Cal.L.Rev. (1951) 374, 390, 394, 395, 396 and especially 399; Roeder, Moral Right, 53 Harv.L.Rev. (1940) 554,. 561, 565.

. See, e.g., Vargas v. Esquire, 7 Cir., 164 F.2d 522, 526; Crimi v. Rutgers Presbyterian Church, 194 Misc. 570, 89 N.Y.S. 2d 813 (right of a mural painter to enjoin destruction by church of his mural; court held that his was an interest in real estate and distinguishable from interests in literary property); Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 196 Misc. 67, 80 N.Y.S.2d 575.

. Guiseppi v. Walling, 2 Cir., 144 F.2d 608, 618-619, 155 A.L.R. 761.

. There is need to avoid both excessive nominalism and excessive “realism.” See Frank, Courts on Trial (1949) 401-404.