263 F. 373 | 2d Cir. | 1920
This action rests on copyright alone, though the pleadings contain an abandoned suggestion of unfair competition. Therefore the first inquiry is: What does the plaintiff’s pamphlet contain that is copyrightable matter ? Certainly not General Pershing’s official report, that being a. public document. Admitting this, plaintiff rests on the doctrine of Callaghan v. Meyers, 128 U. S. 617, 9 Sup. Ct. 177, 32 L. Ed. 547, and thereby necessarily likens the addenda, the ornamentation, and indeed the “get-up” of his pamphlet, to the original matter specified in that well-known decision as the original matter commonly added by reporters to judicial decisions. Considering that the official report,
This conduct may be called mean, but it is not punishable under the Copyright Act (Comp. St. §§ 9517 et seq.). It is even possible that defendants’ printers set up'the official report from a copy of plaintiff’s book; identity of pagination leads to that suspicion; but legally that is not of sufficient importance to constitute infringement of copyright. Banks, etc., Co. v. Lawyers’, etc., Co., 169 Fed. 386, 94 C. C. A. 642, 17 Ann. Cas. 957.
But, however unattractive in a business or moral sense defendants’ conduct has been, it was open to any one to print and publish the public document in question, and there is as much original additional labor in defendants’ selection of pictures as there was in plaintiff’s selection of different pictures. In this sense the later publication, made up of matter open to the whole world can itself be called original and new. Chautauqua School v. National School, 238 Fed. 151, 151 C. C. A. 227. Assuming, then, that plaintiff’s pamphlet contains any copyrightable matter, we are of opinion (1) that defendants’ is not an infringement; and (2) that it may itself be pronounced a new and original work, in the very broad sense the law compels us to attach that name to trivialities having pecuniary value. Hein v. Harris (C. C.) 175 Fed. 877.
The decree appealed from is affirmed, but, under the circumstances, without costs.