Re: Tasini v. NY Times reversed by 2d Circuit

On 10/03/99, Rod Dixon <rod[_at_]cyberspaces.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 30 Sep 1999, Robert Cumbow <rcumbow[_at_]grahamdunn.com> wrote:
> >
> > The infringement occurs, as I understand it, when an INDIVIDUAL
> > article is retrieved or copied from that database SEPARATELY from
> > the collective work of which it is a part. For example, the New
> > York Times owns the copyright in the Sunday, September 26, 1999
> > issue of the New York Times Magazine. It does not necessarily own
> > the copyright in the individual items of content therein, only the
> > copyright in the collection. Because it owns that copyright, it
> > can license the entire collective work to LEXIS/NEXIS or whomever,
> > for reproduction in an electronic database, and that constitutes a
> > protectable "revision" of the work under Sec. 201(c) of the Act.
> > However, what the appellate court held is that, under that license,
> > ONLY the entire collective work may be viewed or downloaded; the
> > license does NOT give the New York Times or its licensee the right
> > to reproduce and sell separate copies of the individual articles
> > apart from their appearance in the magazine issue as a whole. For
> > these, the authors must be separately compensated.
> >
> > This is only my reading of this opinion--I'd be interested to
> > hear from anyone who has a different interpretation of the impact
>
> I must disagree. Although the outcome of the 2nd Circuit's decision
> seems to be correct, the court's rationale is largely unsatisfying.
> The court claimed to be interpreting the Copyright Act, but as the
> district court correctly noted the Act is actually silent on the
> Tasini issue. At any rate, my reading of the decision is the the
> 2nd Circuit has decided that the default rules of copyright do not
> permit publishers, as owners of the copyright in a collective work,
> to create a new anthology without obtaining permission from authors.
> In other words, publishers of print publications need to obtain
> permission from freelance authors before using those authors' works
> in an electronic database since most of these databases are new
> anthologies.

Is anyone aware of any cases that address the issue of what the phrase "in the same series" means in 201(c)? I had always assumed that anthologies would be permitted as "later collective works in the same series."

--Barbara Friedman
<blfriedman[_at_]bryancavellp.com> Received on Mon Oct 04 1999 - 14:24:46 GMT