Gross v. Seligman
| Citation | 212 F. 930 |
| Decision Date | 10 March 1914 |
| Docket Number | 224. |
| Parties | GROSS et al. v. SELIGMAN et al. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) |
House Grossman & Vorhaus, of New York City (Chas. Goldzier, of New York City, of counsel), for appellants.
Archibald Cox, of New York City (R. W. Byerly, of New York City, of counsel), for appellees.
Before LACOMBE, COXE, and WARD, Circuit Judges.
LACOMBE Circuit Judge (after stating the facts as above).
This is not simply the case of taking two separate photographs of the same young woman.
When the Grace of Youth was produced a distinctly artistic conception was formed, and was made permanent as a picture in the very method which the Supreme Court indicated in the Oscar Wilde Case (Burrow-Giles Company v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 4 Sup.Ct. 279, 28 L.Ed. 349) would entitle the person producing such a picture to a copyright to protect it. It was there held that the artist who used the camera to produce his picture was entitled to copyright just as he would have been had he produced it with a brush on canvas. If the copyrighted picture were produced with colors on canvas and were then copyrighted and sold by the artist, he would infringe the purchaser's rights if thereafter the same artist, using the same model, repainted the same picture with only trivial variations of detail and offered it for sale.
Of course when the first picture has been produced and copyrighted every other artist is entirely free to form his own conception of the Grace of Youth, or anything else, and to avail of the same young woman's services in making it permanent, whether he works with pigments or a camera. If, by chance, the pose, background, light, and shade, etc., of this new picture were strikingly similar, and if, by reason of the circumstance that the same young woman was the prominent feature in both compositions, it might be very difficult to distinguish the new picture from the old one, the new would still not be an infringement of the old because it is in no true sense a copy of the old. This is a risk which the original artist takes when he merely produces a likeness of an existing face and figure, instead of supplementing its features by the exercise of his own imagination.
It seems to us, however, that we have no such new photograph of the same model. The identity of the artist and the many close identities of pose, light, and shade, etc., indicate very strongly that the first picture was used to...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Mannion v. Coors Brewing Co.
...of originality, which I will refer to as originality in the creation of the subject, played an essential role in Rogers v. Koons58 and Gross v. Seligman.59 In Rogers, the court held that the copyright in the plaintiff's photograph Puppies, which depicted a contrived scene of the photographe......
-
Latimer v. Roaring Toyz, Inc., 8:06-CV-1921-T-30EAJ.
...conception of the product. See, e.g., Burrow-Giles, 111 U.S. at 60, 4 S.Ct. 279; Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d at 307; Gross v. Seligman, 212 F. 930, 931 (2d Cir.1914); Eastern Am. Trio Prods., Inc. v. Tang Elec. Corp., 97 F.Supp.2d 395, 417-18 (S.D.N.Y.2000); Kisch v. Ammirati & Puns, 657 F.Su......
-
Laskowitz v. Marie Designer, Inc.
...74 S.Ct. 460, affirmed the ruling of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Stein v. Mazer, supra this note. 21 Gross v. Seligman, 2 Cir., 1914, 212 F. 930. 22 Kaeser & Blair, Inc. v. Merchants' Ass'n, 6 Cir., 1933, 64 F.2d 575, 23 See, Baker v. Selden, 1879, 101 U.S. 99, 106-107, 2......
-
Silvers v. Russell
...the Mark There is direct authority for holding that the use of even a human figure in an original manner is protected. In Gross v. Seligman, 2 Cir., 1914, 212 F. 930, an artist posed a model in the nude and from it produced a photograph which he called "The Grace of Youth". He copyrighted i......
-
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS INDEPENDENT CREATION, AND IT'S A GOOD THING, TOO.
...191 F.2d 99, 102-03 (2d Cir. 1951) (quoting Chamberlin v. Uris Sales Corp., 150 F.2d 512, 513 (2d Cir. 1945)) (citing Gross v. Seligman, 212 F. 930 (2d Cir. (148.) Id. at 103 (quoting Hoague-Sprague Corp. v. Frank C. Meyer, Inc., 31 F.2d 583, 586 (E.D.N.Y. 1929)). (149.) Judge Frank explain......
-
Information privacy/information property.
...(infringement action by owner of mail order supply company against former employee for replicating catalogue design); Gross v. Seligman, 212 F. 930 (2d Cir. 1914) (action by holder of photograph copyright against photographer for using similar (67.) See 17 U.S.C. [sections] 201(b) (1996). (......