Carol Barnhart, Inc. v. Economy Cover Corp., CV 83-5372.

• Decision Date: 06 March 1985
• Docket Number: No. CV 83-5372.,CV 83-5372.
• Citation: 603 F. Supp. 432
• Parties: CAROL BARNHART, INC., Plaintiff, v. ECONOMY COVER CORP., Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

603 F. Supp. 432

CAROL BARNHART, INC., Plaintiff, v. ECONOMY COVER CORP., Defendant.

No. CV 83-5372.

United States District Court, E.D. New York.

March 6, 1985.

Blum, Kaplan, Friedman, Silberman & Beran, New York City, for plaintiff.

Bierman, Bierman & Peroff, New York City, for defendant.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

WEXLER, District Judge.

Carol Barnhart, Inc., a designer and manufacturer of store display forms, asks for reargument, pursuant to Local Rule 3(j), of this Court's earlier grant of partial summary judgment in favor of Economy Cover Corporation, a manufacturer of display forms and accessories. At issue is the copyrightability of four half-torso clothing display forms created by plaintiff and copied by defendant. In granting summary judgment this Court held that the four display forms were utilitarian articles with no conceptually or physically separable artistic elements, hence not entitled to copyright.

First, plaintiff disputes the Court's analysis of the prima facie evidence provided by the grant of registration. Carol Barnhart, Inc. v. Economy Cover Corp., 594 F.Supp. 364, 370 (E.D.N.Y.1984). Plaintiff calls this an unsupported finding of fact that calls for reargument. The Court does not consider or intend its reasoning to be a finding of fact. The statute dictates that the certificate of registration is "prima facie evidence of the validity of the copyright." 17 U.S.C. § 410(c). Nevertheless, the Court of Appeals has held that a certificate of registration is not an irrebuttable presumption of copyright validity. Durham Industries, Inc. v. Tomy Corp., 630 F.2d 905, 908 (2d Cir.1980). Specifically, the Court declared, "Where other evidence on the record casts doubt on the question, validity will not be assumed." Id. Notably, the district court in Durham Industries had held a copyright invalid on a motion for summary judgment, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.

The question of "validity" goes to a number of elements, including originality, authorship, copyrightability, and compliance with statutory formalities. Under the 1976 Act, § 410(c) bestows prima facie validity on works registered within five years of publication, but leaves it to the discretion of the court what weight registration after five years of publication should be given. While originality and authorship may be obscured by the passage of time, copyrightability is not. For while authorship and originality are, at least initially, questions of fact, copyrightability is largely an application of law to undisputed facts in the form of the object sought to be copyrighted. Norris Industries, Inc. v. International Telephone and Telegraph Corp., 696 F.2d 918, 922 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 104 S.Ct. 78, 78 L.Ed.2d 89 (1983). This prompts the Court to question whether the weight given the certificate of registration with regard to copyrightability should be affected by the five-year rule. Be that as it may, the propriety summary of judgment as a resolution to the issue of copyrightability is recognized. Kieselstein-Cord v. Accessories by Pearl, Inc., 632 F.2d 989 (2d Cir.1980).

In deciding the copyrightability issue the Court was reviewing an application of the law to the facts as embodied in the four display forms at issue. 2 M. Nimmer on Copyright § 7.21A at 7-151 (Matthew Bender & Co. 1984)....