Re: Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing (1903)

Pat Sloan <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote
>
> Re: Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing (1903)
> <http://laws.findlaw.com/US/188/239.html>
>
> 1) Is this an important case in copyright law?
>
> 2) What, exactly, is it about, and what is the Supreme Court finding?
> Sounds ridiculous, but I've read the summary over and over, and still
> can't understand what they're talking about.

The proposition for which Bleistein is most frequently cited is "Others are free to copy the original. They are not free to copy the copy"

That is, there exists a copyright in the copy of a work justs as there exists a copyright in the original. This holding has been limited by the Supreme Court's ruling in Feist that there is required a modicum of creativity for a work to be copyrightable. For example, a photocopy of an original work that duplicates exactly the work itself would not be copyrightable. However, if a photographer takes a photograph of a statue that is a public domain work, the photograph is copyrightable even though the public domain work has lost its copyright protection.

There have been several threads on this list that can be located in the archive that discuss what it may take to make a copy of an origiinal work copyrightable. For example, if a color plate of a public domain painting is being made for purposes of showing the work in a book exactly as it appears in the museum, one could argue that although a photograph is being made, and the photograph requires many decisions regarding ligthing, color separation, etc. the photograph is not copyrightable because the goal is to add nothing to the existing work.

You may want to read Hearn v. Meyer, 664 F.Supp. 832 (S.D.N.Y. 1987) for a thorough discussion of this issue.

> 3) Where is the Sixth Circuit?

As for the 6th Circuit, I believe it encompasses Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Bernard Gerdelman
Paule, Camazine & Blumenthal, P.C.
165 N. Meramec, Ste. 600
St. Louis, Missouri
attorney[_at_]i1.net Received on Tue Jun 16 1998 - 14:20:40 GMT