Photo reproductions of art:Bridgeman Art Libary v. Corel

The following summary of the Bridgeman/Corel Case was prepared by Nancy Adelson, Assistant General Counsel of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and is posted here with her permission.

Amalyah Keshet
Head of Visual Resources, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem Board Member, the Museum Computer Network Chair, the MCN Intellectual Property Special Interest Group <akeshet[_at_]netvision.net.il>

> PLEASE NOTE: The following is a summary, and should not be used as, or
> considered, legal advice of any kind. If after reading this summary,
> you have questions, you should confer with your institution's legal
> counsel.
>
> THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY VS. COREL CORP.
>
> Museums which license transparencies of works of art in their
> collections should take note of an opinion issued in November by a
> Federal District Court in New York. The case, entitled The Bridgeman
> Art Library Ltd. vs. Corel Corporation, was instituted by The
> Bridgeman Art Library (Bridgeman), an English company in the business
> of marketing transparencies of public domain works of art owned by
> museums and collectors. It would acquire the reproduction rights in
> these works either from their owners or from freelance photographers,
> and distribute its images as transparencies and as digital files on
> CD-ROM. The defendant, Corel, was a Canadian corporation which
> marketed a CD-ROM containing seven hundred digital reproductions of
> well known paintings by European masters, including 120 images of
> which Bridgeman claimed it controlled the only authorized
> reproductions.
>
> Bridgeman sued Corel in Federal District Court in New York, arguing
> among other things that the images contained in Corel's CD-ROM's must
> have been copies of Bridgeman's transparencies, and that therefore,
> Corel had violated Bridgeman's copyrights in those transparencies.
> Bridgeman noted that it had obtained from the Register of Copyrights
> a certificate of registration for a derivative work consisting of
> digital images and transparencies of all or substantially all of the
> reproductions Bridgeman asserted that Corel had infringed. Corel
> responded in part that Bridgeman had no valid copyrights in its
> images, making any such infringement impossible.
>
> In ruling in favor of Corel and dismissing Bridgeman's claims, the
> District Court held that substantially exact photographic
> reproductions of works of art are not independently copyrightable,
> because they lack the component of originality required under the
> copyright laws of both the United States and the United Kingdom.
> While most photography is sufficiently original to warrant copyright
> protection, the Court pronounced that "a photograph which is no more
> than a copy of the work of another as exact as science and technology
> permit" does not. "'[T]here has been no independent creation, no
> distinguishable variation from preexisting works, nothing recognizably
> the author's own contribution' that sets Bridgeman's reproductions
> apart from the images of the famous works it copied." Consequently,
> the Court determined that any unauthorized use of those reproductions
> would not violate the laws of copyright.
>
> This case, which almost certainly will be appealed, is one which
> museums must follow closely. Because a museum may not hold the
> copyright in a work which it owns, museums have long protected the
> integrity of their works, and have generated important operating
> funds, by managing the use of transparencies of works in their
> collections. While much can be done to achieve these same ends
> through a carefully drafted contract, historically, the copyright laws
> have been an important weapon in policing the unauthorized use of such
> transparencies. Whether this tool has been lost, at least in the
> highly influential Second Circuit, remains to be seen.
>
> ****************************
Received on Tue Jan 19 1999 - 18:22:26 GMT