Electronic Publishing Co. v. Zalytron Tube Corp.

Decision Date04 May 1967
Docket NumberDocket 30916.,No. 349,349
Citation376 F.2d 592
PartiesELECTRONIC PUBLISHING CO., Inc., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ZALYTRON TUBE CORP. et al., Defendants-Appellees.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Norman Lettvin, Chicago, Ill. (Marvin Soffen, Ostrolenk, Faber, Gerb & Soffen, New York City, George P. McAndrews, Bair, Freeman & Molinare, Chicago, Ill., on the brief), for appellant.

Mercer L. Stockell, New York City (W. Hubert Plummer, Rogers, Hoge & Hills, New York City, on the brief), for appellees.

Before MOORE and HAYS, Circuit Judges, and ZAVATT, District Judge.*

HAYS, Circuit Judge:

Electronic Publishing Co., Inc., appeals from a judgment for defendant on a claim for damages for copyright infringement. We find no error and therefore affirm the judgment.

Electronic Publishing is engaged in the business of publishing trade catalogues. Arrow Electronics, Inc. is a distributor of electronic parts. It purchases these parts from various manufacturers and sells them to retail outlets. In connection with its distribution function Arrow commissioned Electronic Publishing to prepare a catalogue for the parts which Arrow has available for sale. Electronic Publishing in turn secured material from the manufacturers who supply Arrow. This material consisting of the manufacturers' advertisements of their products was then, after some additional revision, included in the catalogue which Electronic Publishing prepared for Arrow. Electronic Publishing registered its claim to copyright in the catalogue prepared for Arrow.

Defendant Zalytron Tube Corporation sells electronic parts by mail order and publishes a retail mail order catalogue which lists the products it has available for sale. Some of these products are purchased from Arrow. In preparing its mail order catalogues Zalytron admittedly copied the manufacturers' advertisements which appeared in the catalogue prepared for Arrow by Electronic Publishing. This copying is the basis for Electronic Publishing's claim of copyright infringement.

In Brattleboro Publishing Co. v. Winmill Publishing Corporation, 369 F.2d 565 (2d Cir. 1966), we held that where advertisements previously published in a copyrighted newspaper were published subsequently in another newspaper, the second newspaper did not infringe the first newspaper's copyright because the right to the copyright on the advertisements was in the advertisers who commissioned the publication of the advertisements. We believe that Brattleboro governs this case. The advertisers whose advertisements appeared in the Arrow catalogue had the authority to approve or disapprove the use of their material and the form in which it...

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5 cases
  • Jacobs v. Robitaille
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of New Hampshire
    • January 6, 1976
    ...Press Publishing Co. v. Atlantic County Adv., Inc., 59 N.J. 356, 283 A.2d 102 (1971). See also, Electronic Publishing Co. v. Zalytron Tube Corp., 376 F.2d 592 (2d Cir. 1967); Advertising Exchange v. Witten Hardware Co., 50 F.Supp. 137 (W.D.Mo. The reason for refusing to infer an intent to a......
  • Johannsen v. Brown, Civ. No. 91-1094-FR.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Oregon
    • June 24, 1992
    ...the advertisement was work made for hire. The cases cited by defendants in support of their position, Electronic Publishing Co. v. Zalytron Tube Corp., 376 F.2d 592 (2nd Cir.1967), and Brattleboro Publishing Co. v. Winmill Publishing Corp., 369 F.2d 565 (2nd Cir.1966), were both decided bef......
  • Want Ad Digest, Inc. v. Display Advertising, Inc.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Northern District of New York
    • September 3, 2009
    ...contractor does not own the copyrights in such advertisements. See Brattleboro, 369 F.2d at 567-68; see also Elec. Publ'g Co. v. Zalytron Tube Corp., 376 F.2d 592, 593 (2d Cir.1967). Rather, the Brattleboro court found that such rights belonged to the person or entity who placed the adverti......
  • Central Telephone Co. of Va. v. Johnson Pub. Co., Civ. No. 80-A-1225.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Colorado
    • October 15, 1981
    ...and prepared the advertisement on behalf of its customer, the advertiser is still the copyright owner. Electronic Publishing Co. v. Zalytron Tube Corp., 376 F.2d 592 (2d Cir. 1967) (advertisements in trade catalog); Brattleboro Publishing Co. v. Winmill Publishing Corp., 369 F.2d 565 (2d Ci......
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