Re: Loss of Amos and Andy copyright?

Leslie A. Kurtz <lakurtz[_at_]ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>
> On 4/24/98, Lee Hamovitz <ldh[_at_]loop.com> wrote:
> >
> > A few years ago, I believe, there was a court decision, (possibly
> > Supreme) regarding CBS, Inc. losing copyright to the old "Amos and
> > Andy" characters. I think CBS claimed they felt the shows were
> > racially offensive, so they kept them locked up in the vault, and
> > sued when a theatrical stage producer tried to revive the characters.
> > The court, I believe, ruled that CBS lost rights to the characters
> > because they had done nothing over the years to proclaim their rights.
> > In other words, they should have actively said "we own this and
> > purposely aren't using it."
> >
> > My question, this is all fuzzy and deep in my memory and I'm not sure
> > I'm not imagining all this. I've searched all over and can't find
> > anything. Is there an actual case like this? Does anyone have a
> > citation? Please respond to me personally, as well as the list.
>
> I think the case you are referring to is Silverman v. C.B.S., 870 F.
> 2d 40 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 492 U.S. 907 (1989). The court did
> not say that CBS lost its copyright because it did nothing with the
> characters. Indeed, the owner of a copyright is not obliged to do
> anything to maintain its copyright.
>
> Silvewrman wrote a script for a broadway musical comedy based on the
> characters Silverman Amos and Andy. Although the copyright had
> expired on the radio scripts, the television programs were still under
> copyright. The district court found that the characters that were
> in the public domain in a literary work (the radio scripts) were
> protectible under the copyright in the audio-visual presentation. The
> visual representations of the characters in the television program went
> beyond the word portraits in the public domain scripts and were
> therefore protected. The duplication of the characters as they appeared
> on television would infringe the CBS copyrights. The district court
> appeared to protect all elements of the audio-visual characters, whether
> they were derived from the public domain scripts or not.
>
> The court of appeals found this approach unjustified, stating that the
> CBS copyrights protected only additional expression beyond that
> contained in the public domain radio scripts. The Amos 'n Andy
> characters were sufficiently delineated in the public domain scripts to
> have been placed in the public domain along with the scripts. Silverman
> was entitled to use this public domain material. But he was not
> entitled to use any further delineation of the characters contained in
> any script or program still protected by copyright.

You may also want to see the article, Gordon, Stephen R. "Silverman v. CBS : Amos 'n' Andy Go to Court." vol. 7, no. 3, Entertainment and Sports Lawyer (spring/summer 1989).

Entertainment and Sports Lawyer is published by the ABA

Best regards,

Richard Greenstone
(former editor, Entertainment and Sports Lawyer) <richard[_at_]rjg.com> Received on Tue Apr 28 1998 - 21:17:48 GMT