On 6/14/98, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> Re: Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing (1903)
> <http://laws.findlaw.com/US/188/239.html>
>
> For some literary research I am doing (I am not an attorney), I would
> appreciate it if anyone can answer my questions on the above copyright
> law case, a summary of which follows.
>
> 1) Is this an important case in copyright law?
It's a famous case.
> 2) What, exactly, is it about, and what is the Supreme Court finding?
Bleistein stands for the proposition that just because a work is commercial doesn't mean that it can't have creative, copyrightable value.
"Certainly works are not the less connected with the fine arts because their pictorial quality attracts the crowd and therefore gives them a real use -- if use means to increase trade and to help to make money. A picture is none the less a picture and none the less a subject of copyright that it is used for an advertisement."
"Yet if they command the interest of any public, they have a commercial value -- it would be bold to say that they have not an aesthetic and educational value -- and the taste of any public is not to be treated with contempt."
Judges are not supposed to be aesthetic guardians of what constitutes creativity.
"It would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of pictorial illustrations, outside of the narrowest and most obvious limits. At the one extreme some works of genius would be sure to miss appreciation. Their very novelty would make them repulsive until the public had learned the new language in which their author spoke."
> 3) Where is the Sixth Circuit?
Includes the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. For a map of all the circuit courts, see:
http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/Fed-Ct/
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