In re Literary Works in Electronic Databases

Decision Date29 November 2007
Docket NumberDocket No. 05-5943-cv(L).,Docket No. 06-0223-cv(CON).
PartiesIn re LITERARY WORKS IN ELECTRONIC DATABASES COPYRIGHT LITIGATION. Irvin Muchnick, Abraham Zaleznik, Charles Schwartz, Jack Sands, Todd Pitock, Judith Stacey, Judith Trotsky, Christopher Goodrich, Kathy Glicken and Anita Bartholomew, Objectors-Appellants, v. Thomson Corporation, Dialog Corporation, Gale Group, Inc., West Publishing Company, Inc., Dow Jones & Company, Inc., Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive, LLC, Knight Ridder Inc., Knight Ridder Digital, Mediastream, Inc., Newsbank, Inc., Proquest Company, Reed Elsevier Inc., Union-Tribune Publishing Company, New York Times Company, Copley Press, Inc., Ebsco Industries, Inc. and Participating Publisher Tribune Company, Defendants-Appellees, Michael Castleman Inc., E.L. Doctorow, Tom Dunkel, Andrea Dworkin, Jay Feldman, James Gleick, Ronald Hayman, Robert Lacey, Ruth Laney, Paula Mcdonald, P/K Associates, Inc., Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Gerald Posner, Miriam Raftery, Ronald M. Schwartz, Mary Sherman, Donald Spoto, Robert E. Treuhaft And Jessica L. Treuhaft Trust, Robin Vaughan, Robley Wilson, Marie Winn, National Writers Union, The Authors Guild, Inc. and American Society of Journalists and Authors, Plaintiffs-Appellees, Edward Roeder, Appellant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Hosie MacArthur LLP, San Francisco, CA; A.J. De Bartolomeo, Girard Gibbs & De Bartolomeo LLP, San Francisco, CA; Gary Fergus, Fergus, A Law Firm, San Francisco, CA, on the brief), for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Before: WINTER, WALKER, and STRAUB, Circuit Judges.**

Judge WALKER dissents in a separate opinion.

STRAUB, Circuit Judge:

This class action copyright litigation arises from the unauthorized electronic reproduction of various written works. Named plaintiffs and class members consist mainly of freelance writers who contracted with publishers to author the works for publication in print media, and retained the copyrights in those works. The contracts did not grant the publishers the right to electronically reproduce those works or license them for electronic reproduction by others. But the publishers did so anyway.

Plaintiffs then brought this class action on the theory that such electronic reproduction infringed their copyrights. After years of negotiations, class and defense counsel finally agreed on a settlement. Following lengthy motion practice, the District Court for the Southern District of New York certified a class and approved the settlement. We review that order and judgment on this appeal.

The overwhelming majority of claims within the certified class arise from the infringement of unregistered copyrights. We have held, albeit outside the class action context, that district courts lack statutory subject matter jurisdiction over infringement claims arising from unregistered copyrights. See Well-Made Toy Mfg. Corp. v. Goffa Int'l Corp., 354 F.3d 112, 115 (2d Cir.2003); Morris v. Bus. Concepts, Inc., 259 F.3d 65, 72 (2d Cir. 2001). The District Court never specifically addressed this potential jurisdictional flaw.

The precise issue on appeal is whether the District Court had jurisdiction to certify a class consisting of claims arising from the infringement of unregistered copyrights and to approve a settlement with respect to those claims. We hold that it did not. We therefore vacate its order and judgment and remand the case for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

BACKGROUND

In New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483, 488, 121 S.Ct. 2381, 150 L.Ed.2d 500 (2001), the Supreme Court held that § 201(c) of the Copyright Act does not permit publishers to reproduce freelance works electronically when they lack specific authorization to do so. Tasini effectively requires publishers wishing to electronically reproduce written works to obtain a separate license to do so. Shortly after the Court decided Tasini, three preexisting class action infringement suits, which had been suspended pending the decision, were activated and consolidated in the Southern District of New York. A fourth, nearly identical action was coordinated with that consolidated action. Together, these claims comprise the instant litigation.

In this case there are basically two kinds of plaintiffs: individual authors and trade groups representing authors. Defendants also fall into two classes: companies that publish original electronic content, such as the New York Times Co., and companies that operate databases that license content from publishers, such as Thomson Corporation, the owner of Westlaw.

The named plaintiffs, and the class members they purport to represent, produced written works for certain defendants on a freelance basis. Based on their copyrights in those freelance works, plaintiffs assert claims for two types of infringement. They first claim that publishers, such as the New York Times Co., infringed their copyrights. This infringement allegedly occurred when the publishers licensed the articles for print publication only but also reproduced the articles in their electronic databases. Since the publishers needed but never received a license for this second, electronic reproduction, plaintiffs allege that it constitutes infringement.

Plaintiffs next claim that the electronic database services infringed their copyrights. This infringement allegedly occurred when those companies licensed the articles from the publishers and then reproduced the articles in their own electronic databases. Because the publishers never possessed the right to electronically reproduce the articles, plaintiffs urge, the publishers could not grant any license for electronic reproduction. Thus, any such license that the publishers sold to the aggregators and databases was legally ineffective. Consequently, according to plaintiffs, the electronic reproduction by the databases is unauthorized and infringing.

Since Tasini established the basic soundness of plaintiffs' liability theory, the District Court swiftly referred the parties to mediation. Before the mediator, defendants contended that this litigation possessed scant settlement value because the District Court could never certify the vast majority of the claims for inclusion in any proposed class. Defendants noted that section 411(a) of the Copyright Act provides that "no action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title." 17 U.S.C. § 411(a) (emphases in defendants' mediation submission). "That rule," defendants wrote, "whose language could hardly be clearer, precludes the certification of any class respecting works in which a copyright has not been registered." Defendants then cited authority for the proposition that the District Court "lacks jurisdiction . . . to certify a class covering any unregistered works." Citing survey evidence showing that freelancers register less than one percent of their works, defendants noted that this jurisdictional failure likely affected more than 99 percent of the claims at issue.

Despite this looming jurisdictional issue, the desire to achieve global peace in the publishing industry spurred the parties through more than three years of "often heated" negotiations until they reached an agreement in 2005. The agreement defines the class, "for settlement purposes only," as follows:

All persons who, individually or jointly, own a copyright under the United States copyright laws in an English language literary work that has been reproduced, displayed, adapted, licensed, sold and/or distributed in any electronic or digital format, without the person's express authorization by a member of the Defense Group or any member's subsidiaries, affiliates, or licensees (a) at any time on or after August 15, 1997 (regardless of when the work first appeared in an electronic database) or (b) that remained in circulation after August 15, 1997, even if licensed prior thereto, including English language works qualifying for U.S. copy-right protection under an international treaty (hereinafter "Subject Work").

The parties agree that the large majority of "subject works" have not been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

The settlement sorts plaintiffs' claims into three groups. Category A claims concern copyrights that were registered prior to any infringement. Because these copyrights were registered before the infringing reproduction, they are eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees under the Copyright Act. See 17 U.S.C. § 412. Category B claims concern copyrights that were registered after the infringing reproduction but before December 31, 2002. Under the Copyright Act, these claims qualify for actual damages only. See id. Category C claims, by far the most numerous, regard copyrights registered after December 31, 2002 or not registered at all.

The settlement also assigns a damages formula to each type of claim. Category A claimants receive a...

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