Aldrich v. Remington Rand

Decision Date17 July 1942
Docket NumberCivil Action No. 263.
Citation52 F. Supp. 732
PartiesALDRICH v. REMINGTON RAND, Inc., et al.
CourtU.S. District Court — Northern District of Texas

R. V. Nichols and Martin, Moore & Brewster, all of Fort Worth, Tex., for plaintiff.

Cantey, Hanger, McMahon, McKnight & Johnson, of Fort Worth, Tex., for defendant Remington Rand, Inc.

Rhinehart Rouer, of Fort Worth, Tex., for defendant City of Fort Worth.

WILSON, District Judge.

This is a suit for infringement of a copyright, praying damages, injunction, etc.

Plaintiff wrote a manual, or so called book, intended to facilitate the collection, assessment and equalization of taxes by cities, counties and school districts. In his book he said this of his system:

"The `Tax Record System'

"This system and service is for counties, cities and other taxing districts, of Texas, and is the most modern and efficient system of property revaluation for tax purpose— Leaves a complete workable set of tax records in the district, and equips the assessor-collector with the proper methods for equalizing, assessing and collection of taxes."

In addition to a tax system, for the purposes indicated, plaintiff devised a bookkeeping system to make it efficient, all of which was more or less covered in his book. Attached to it, in the back of same, he had many forms, illustrative of his system. In paragraph 8 of Chapter V he referred to those forms and specially constructed automatic locking steel cabinets for housing his tax system, as follows: "In the back of this manual are shown samples of all forms, exactly as used in the system. Photographs of the steel filing cabinets with automatic locks specially constructed to house the complete system."

The defendants infringed, if at all, in using some of those forms in installing the system for the City of Fort Worth. The defendants denied they copied or were using plaintiff's forms. I held, in an oral opinion at the conclusion of the trial, that they were. Also, that they were infringing plaintiff's copyright, if those forms were included and were copyrightable. As to the latter question briefs were to be submitted. That is the principal question to be decided. My conclusion is they are not copyrightable. Plaintiff's quarrel appears to me to be one more with the inadequacy of protection afforded such an author by our system of copyright laws, than with these defendants. Plaintiff is asserting rights here he could only assert successfully if he had a patent on his tax bookkeeping system. But he has no patent. That and that only could protect him as against a use by the public of the system he describes in his book and illustrates by his forms. That seems to be well settled by the Supreme Court, as well by regulations duly promulgated by the Librarian of Congress.

In Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 101, 25 L.Ed. 841, on this identical subject the Supreme Court held:

"There is no doubt that a work on the subject of book-keeping, though only explanatory of well-known systems, may be the subject of a copyright; but, then, it is claimed only as a book. Such a book may be explanatory either of old systems, or of an entirely new system; and, considered as a book, as the work of an author, conveying information on the subject of bookkeeping, and containing detailed explanations of the art, it may be a very valuable acquisition to the practical knowledge of the community. But there is a clear distinction between the book, as such, and the art which it is intended to illustrate. The mere statement of the proposition is so evident, that it requires hardly any argument to support it. The same distinction may be predicated of every other art as well as that of book-keeping. * * *

"The copyright of a work on mathematical science cannot give to the author an exclusive right to the methods of operation which he propounds, or to the diagrams which he employs to explain them, so as to prevent an engineer from using them whenever occasion requires. The very object of publishing a book on science or the useful arts is to communicate to the world the useful knowledge which it contains. But this object would be frustrated if the knowledge could not be used without incurring the guilt of piracy of the book. And where the art it teaches cannot be used without employing the methods and diagrams used to illustrate the book, or such as are similar to them, such methods and diagrams are to be considered as necessary incidents to the art, and given therewith to the public; not given for the purpose of publication in other works explanatory of the art, but for the purpose of practical application. * * *

"On the other hand, the teachings of science and the rules and methods of useful art have their final end in application and use; and this application and use are what the public derive from the publication of a book which teaches them. * * *

"Recurring to the case before us, we observe that Charles Selden, by his books, explained and described a peculiar system of book-keeping, and illustrated his method by means of ruled lines and blank columns, with proper headings on a page, or on successive pages. Now, whilst no one has a right to print or publish his book, or any material part thereof, as a book intended to convey instruction in the art, any person may practice and use the art itself which he has described and illustrated therein. The use of the art is a totally different thing from a publication of the book explaining it. The copyright of a book on book-keeping cannot secure the exclusive right to make, sell, and use accountbooks prepared upon the plan set forth in such book. * * *

"The description of the art in a book, though entitled to the benefit of copyright, lays no foundation for an exclusive claim to the art itself. The object of the one is explanation; the object of the other is use. The former may be secured by copyright. The latter can only be secured, if it can be secured at all, by letters-patent."

The description in that opinion of Selden's forms is a better description of plaintiff's forms than I can write. The basic distinction between rights under patents and rights under copyrights must be constantly kept in mind, one being that the public is not free to use the invention described in a patent, but it is privileged to use whatever information is imparted in a copyrighted book about any system, art or manufacture described in it; furthermore, that such a use is the consideration the public receives for the grant of the copyright. As the Court made clear, an article written by one author describing a bookkeeping system, an art, or a manufacture, wholly the creation of another, is nevertheless subject to copyright. I think what that opinion holds, pertaining to the questions we have here, is still the law today. It is claimed Congress changed it, but I do not think so.

Plaintiff takes the apparently ingenuous position that his forms which illustrated, pictured, his tax bookkeeping system, as such became an ingredient, a component part, of his book, and were covered by his copyright, entitled alike to protection against use by the public. Plaintiff's forms of themselves imparted no more information than the words "credit" or "debit" at the head of such columns as we ordinarily see in any system of simple bookkeeping. With the book, plaintiff's forms attached thereto do complete the description of his system. This position was substantially the one taken in the Baker v. Selden case, and answered by the Court. The philosophy breaks down because: It is equivalent to taking the position that the author may so perfectly and completely describe what he teaches that the public may not be permitted to use same. The forms in question embody the mechanics of the tax bookkeeping system taught by plaintiff. It is a loose-leaf system. Those forms attached to plaintiff's copyrighted book are merely a page out of his loose-leaf system, even identical in dimensions. They embody in practice what plaintiff taught, all the public can use, after their use is explained or understood. The public can use the forms as plaintiff makes them, or modify them, change, improve them, or make them worse, without committing any piracy. Those forms belong to the public, plaintiff himself merely being a constituent part of it. How could the public appropriate the system identically, if it could not use the forms? That is all the defendants did, for which they are sued. The complete answer is given by the Supreme Court in Baker v. Selden: "The copyright of a book on book-keeping cannot secure the exclusive right to make, sell, and use account-books prepared upon the plan set forth in such book."

But plaintiff says Baker v. Selden has been overruled; that the scope of the copyright laws have been so changed and extended by Acts of Congress since that decision, it is no longer controlling. Davis v. Vories, 141 Mo. 234, 42 S.W. 707, 708; Perris v. Hexamer, 99 U.S. 674, 25 L.Ed. 308; Kennedy v. McTammany, C.C., 33 F. 584; Stowe v. Thomas, 23 Fed.Cas. pages 201, 207, No. 13,514; National Tel. News Co. v. Western Union Tel. Co., 7 Cir., 109 F. 294, 297, 60 L.R.A. 805; International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U. S. 215, 39 S.Ct. 68, 63 L.Ed. 211, 2 A.L.R. 293; Advertisers Exch. v. Laufe, D.C., 29 F.Supp. 1; Lindsay & Brewster, Inc., v. Verstein, D.C., 21 F.Supp. 264; Kraft v. Cohen, D.C., 32 F.Supp. 821; Deutsch v. Arnold, 2 Cir., 98 F.2d 686. As to the question here to decide, I do not agree with that view. I think it is controlling. This significant admission is made in plaintiff's brief: "The attention of the Court is further called to the fact that the Copyright Act, Title 17, Sec. 5, U.S.C.A., neither expressly includes, nor does it expressly or by implication exclude the matters herein involved (forms) as copyrightable matter. The only method of determination is the judicial constructions of the act, together with the administrative interpretations of the ...

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