Suit by appellant against the appellees for infringement of a copyright for an interest and discount time teller. The trial court dismissed thе bill for want of equity. No memorandum was filed, but we may assume that the same questions were presented below as were argued here. No quеstion is made as to the regularity of the proceedings to procure the copyright, and the ownership is admitted. Since 1915 appellant has for each successive year prepared, printed, published, and distributed the copyrighted work under the title of “Heinz Interest аnd Discount Time Teller.” Recently appellees put out a similar compilation, and in defense of this suit urge, first, that the copyright is invalid, the insistence on this point being that the subject-matter is not copyrightable; and, second, that their production, which they call a “maturity calеndar, ’ ’ does not infringe.
The copyright statute, in naming the *36 classes of works for which copyright may be claimed, in section 5 (Comp. St. § 9521) specifies: “(a) Books, including composite and cyclopedic works, directories, gazeteers and other compilations. ’ ’ The Century Dictionary defines compilatiоn as “(2) the gathering of materials for books, documents, tables, etc., from existing sources;” and (3) that which is compiled.” Appellant in its brief well sаys that its “copyrighted publication comprises a new, original arrangement, combination, and collocation of matter forming a composite work, having two separate pages for each business day, each pair of pages carrying a comрrehensive diagram, so arranged, composed, and positioned in contrasting colors, with-words, markings,' and numerals, as to furnish at a glance to the banker, without computation, practically all information pertaining to time- on commercial paper. ”
The aрpellant seeks to protect a copyright upon a certain combination of words, figures, and symbols in contrasting colors, so sеlected, ordered, and arranged as to give the banker “at a glance” the information desired. Under the authorities, and in the view of the copyright law, this time teller is a writing and the person designing and producing it is an author. Under the statute, giving words therein used their proper signification, the appellant’s publication is at least a compilation. Copyright Bulletin No. 15, defining what may be copyrighted under the term"“books,” sаys: “The term ‘book,’ as used in the law, includes tabulated forms of information, frequently called charts, tables of figures showing the results of mathematiсal computation, such as logarithmic tables, interest, cost and' wage tables.”
By administrative construction appellant’s publicаtion is a book. “Copyright may justly be claimed by an author of a book who has taken existing materials from sources common to all writers, and arranged and combined them in a new form, and given them an application unknown before, for the reason that, in so doing, he has exercised skill and discretion in making these selections, arrangements, and combinations, and, having presented something that is new and useful, he is entitled to the exclusive enjoyment of his improvement, as provided in the copyright act.” Justice Clifford in Lawrence v. Dana, Fed. Cas. No. 8,136.
Justicе Story, in Emerson v. Davies, Fed. Cas. No. 4,436, in sustaining the copyright of Emerson’s North American Arithmetic, said: “The book of the plaintiff is, in my judgment, new and original in the sense in which those words are to be understood in eases of copyright. The question is not whether the materials which are used are entirеly new, and have never been used before, or even that they have never been used before for the same purpose. The truе question is, whether the same plan, arrangement and combination of materials have been used before for the same purpose or for.any other purpose. If they have not, then the author is entitled to a copyright although he may have gathered hints for his plan and arrangement, or parts of his plan and arrangement, from existing and known sources. He may have borrowed much of his materials from оthers, but if they are combined in a different manner from what was in use before, and a fortiori, if his plan and arrangement are real improvements upon the existing modes, he is en-. titled to a copyright in the book embodying such improvement.”
In this case Emerson had copyrighted an аrithmetic for young learners. Of course, the materials of which it was composed were old and in the public domain; but his copyright covered and protected the particular plan, arrangement, and combination which he had set forth in his book. These early easеs have been frequently cited and relied upon, and the text-books on the subject of copyright lay down the same rules and principles. Appellant’s copyright is valid as a copyright of a plan, arrangement, and combination of materials in a particular way and for a particular purpose. The materials used are all old and in the public domain, but the selection, the ordering and arrangеment, are new and useful, and copyrightable.
In deciding the question of infringement, the first and most obvious thing to do is to compare the productions themselves. The copyrightable feature of appellant's production being a particular plan, arrangement, and combination of materials, the identity of such plan, arrangement, and combination of similar materials, found in appellee’s production, not only suggests, but establishes, the claim of copying. Appellees’ position, however, is that, having explicitly denied that they copied appellant’s production, and haying sworn positively that they got their ideas from other sources, and no one having sworn to the contrary, the court was bound to find no copying and therefore no infringement. The eases are numerous where such situations have aris *37 en and the same claim has been made without avail.
It is nоt necessary, in order to hold against this contention, that appellees swore falsely, or that they consciously followed aрpellant’s work. They had sold and handled appellant’s publication for several years. They must have become very familiar with the рlan, arrangement, and combination set forth in it. One may copy from memory. It is not necessary to such act that the copied article be before him at the time. Impressions register in our memories, and it is difficult at times to tell what calls them up. If the thing covered by a copyright has become familiar to the mind’s eye, and one produces it from memory and writes it down, he copies just the same, and this' may' be done without conscious plagiarism. In this case, in all the essentials of the thing copyrighted, similarity amounts to identity, and the evidence establishes infringement.
Reversed and remanded, with directions to enter a decree for appellant.