Inter-City Press, Inc. v. Siegfried
| Decision Date | 22 July 1958 |
| Docket Number | No. 9023.,9023. |
| Citation | 172 F. Supp. 37 |
| Parties | INTER-CITY PRESS, INC., a corporation, Plaintiff, v. Craig SIEGFRIED, d/b/a The Pictorial Shopper and The Daily News, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Missouri |
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED
John H. Foard, Kansas City, Mo., for plaintiff.
Rufus Burrus, Independence, Mo., for defendant.
The plaintiff instituted this action against the defendant under the Act of July 30, 1947, 61 Stat. 652; Title 17, § 101, U.S.C.A. for alleged violation of certain copyright claimed by it.
Plaintiff is the owner and publisher of The Independence Sentinel, The Inter-City News, The Sugar Creek Herald and The Lotawana News, and is the lessor and publisher of The Jackson County Democrat; all being newspapers published and distributed in the Jackson County, Missouri, area.
Defendant is the publisher of two newspapers, The Pictorial Shopper and The Daily News, also published and distributed in the Jackson County, Missouri, area.
Plaintiff, in his Complaint, prays that:
(1) the defendant be permanently enjoined from infringing any copyrights of any issues of any newspapers of the plaintiff.
(2) defendants be required to pay to plaintiff such damages as it suffered due to defendant's infringement, and to account to the plaintiff for all profits realized from the infringement.
The items alleged to have been copied by the defendant and constituting the infringement may be described and hereafter referred to as:
Obviously, the alleged infringements involve three distinct components to be found in practically every newspaper, viz.: the news article, the cartoon, and the advertisement.
Newspapers, as periodicals, are copyrightable under Title 17, § 3, U.S. C.A.:
See 17 U.S.C.A. § 5 which provides:
Before considering the "copyrightable component parts" of a newspaper which are accorded protection under the Copyright Laws, consideration must first be given to the "notice" required by Title 17 U.S.C.A. § 10 to preserve a copyright.
§ 10, Title 17 U.S.C.A. is as follows:
"Publication of work with notice —Any person entitled thereto by this title may secure copyright for his work by publication thereof with the notice of copyright required by this title; and such notice shall be affixed to each copy thereof published or offered for sale in the United States by authority of the copyright proprietor, except in the case of books seeking ad interim protection under section 22 of this title."
The form of the notice required by this title is as follows § 19, Title 17 U.S.C.A.:
"Notice; form—The notice of copyright required by section 10 of this title shall consist either of the word `Copyright' or the abbreviation `Copr.', accompanied by the name of the copyright proprietor, * * *."
By amendment in 1954, the above sentence of the Section was modified by the insertion of "or the symbol (C)" following the abbreviation "Copr."
There must be substantial compliance with the requisites of Section 19 in order that the copyright be preserved, the purpose of the notice being to inform the public of the copyright and to warn against re-publication.
Throughout the period of alleged infringements, each of the plaintiff's newspapers contained on the first page, immediately below the title, the requisite information prescribed by Section 19, supra, to constitute notice of copyright, viz.: "(Copr.1953 by Inter-City Press, Inc)". The defendant contends that the notice was too small. It is true that the notice is of a slightly smaller type than the rest of the newsprint, yet it is quite legible to the naked eye. The court is not obligated to look beyond the face of the notice to determine its sufficiency, and in this instance, the notice given was sufficient to reasonably inform an intelligent person that the newspaper was copyrighted.
Notice of copyright, when adequately given on a periodical, in accordance with the statute, suffices to protect all copyrightable material contained therein. "One notice of copyright in each volume or in each number of a newspaper or periodical published shall suffice." 17 U.S.C.A. § 20.
The first infringement for consideration is the alleged copying by the defendant of a news article entitled, "Bond Election Has Five Proposals". The article appeared in the copyrighted issue of plaintiff's "Sentinel" newspapers on November 24, 1953. It recited certain information regarding a proposed county bond election, and alludes to various statements of an Emergency Bond Committee regarding the propositions involved in the election. On November 29, 1953, there appeared a verbatim copy of the article, with the exception of the final paragraph, in the defendant's "The Daily News" newspaper. The articles are identical as to caption and content, including discrepancies in printing.
It is the defendant's contention that the article was a press release issued by the Bond Committee, and that the plaintiff has failed to adequately show originality and authorship of said article to substantiate a charge of infringement. Plaintiff, on the other hand, maintains that the article is the work product of its former editor and that it possesses reporting characteristics sufficiently distinguishable to be copyrightable.
Where a particular newspaper article "* * * involves authorship and literary quality and style, apart from bare recital of the facts or statements of news, it is protected by the copyright law." Chicago Record-Herald Co. v. Tribune Ass'n, 7 Cir., 275 F. 797, 798. And, though the article may be but a recitation of facts in the public domain, if there is distinguishable variation in the arrangement and manner of presentation which bespeaks of expression peculiar to authorship, then it falls within the purview of Copyright Law.
In this instance, the fact that the article is based upon a news release, does not of itself detract from its copyright-ability. It may, however, be shown that a newspaper article is such a close reiteration of dedicated facts that there is wholly lacking even a modicum of originality and authorship as to bring it within the protection of the Copyright Laws. DuPuy v. Post Telegram Co., 3 Cir., 210 F. 883; Morse v. Fields, D.C., 127 F. Supp. 63.
The plaintiff having introduced into evidence his certificate of registration of the issue of his newspaper containing the article, has established prima facie the validity of its copyright. Wihtol v. Wells, 7 Cir., 231 F.2d 550. The burden of proof is, therefore, upon the defendant "to produce sufficient evidence to overcome the prima facie presumption of validity." National Institute Inc. for Improvement of Memory v. Nutt, D.C., 28 F.2d 132, 134.
The only evidence introduced to substantiate the defendant's assertion that the article is but a reiteration of a news release of the Bond Committee, is his testimony to the effect that he believed the article to be a news release. The news release itself was not in evidence. On cross-examination the defendant, when asked if the news article had been copied in its entirety, stated:
In order to establish a violation of a copyright, there must be shown more than a mere exact reproduction of an article appearing in a copyrighted newspaper. The Court may almost take judicial notice of the fact that many political articles exactly alike in every particular may appear in many copyrighted papers. There may be "handouts" or political advertisement reproduced from "boiler plates", or ads distributed on a national scale.
The one who sponsors such ads or reading matter has a perfect right to have them run in as many papers as he desired, and if a publisher "runs" one of such articles or ads in his copyrighted newspaper, he has no cause of action against another publisher who likewise "runs" such ad or article. But that situation has not been established with regard to the article we are considering here.
In view of the evidence it can hardly be said that the plaintiff's presumption of a valid copyright has been overcome. The reproduction of the "Bond Issue" article by the defendant was an infringement under the Copyright Law.
The next alleged infringement is the copying of a cartoon published in the December 1, 1953, copyrighted issue of the plaintiff's "Sentinel". The cartoon is entitled "Shall The Fairmount Fish Be Gobbled Up, or Shall It Survive". Said cartoon depicts several "Fish", each labeled in a different manner and composed in a distinctive arrangement giving a pictorial view of a proposed annexation proceedings then of interest to the newspaper readers. The defendant, in...
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