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Herman
Axelbank vs George Rony, the Copley
Press, Hallmark Productions, Kroger
Babb, Fox West Coast Theaters Corp.,
National Broadcasting Company Inc.,
and Does One Through
Twenty
U.
S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
(April 25, 1960) 277 F. 2d
314
Two
collectors of film of the Russian
Revolution each assembled from their
own collections of public-domain
newsfilm their own independent
compilations. Axelbank created
one called Tsar to Lenin, a
70-minute feature copyrighted
1937. GEORGE RONY licensed his
footage to Hallmark Productions,
Inc., which created Halfway to
Hell, which was exhibited in
theaters from 1953; RONY also
licensed footage to NBC for a March
8, 1953, television show, and to
KCOP (an independent Los Angeles
television station) for a weekly
series called Background to
Battle (1955). Axelbank
wrote to KCOP suggesting that RONY
had pirated Tsar to Lenin,
prompting KCOP to cancel
Background to Battle.
Both collections were huge, and both
collectors had identical footage,
yet no evidence indicated that RONY
copied directly from Axelbank, nor
did RONY copy the "new and original
contribution of Axelbank" to his
work: "the sequential development,
the commentary..., and one
map."
In
a footnote, the court
wrote:
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"4.
Of course, even though the
source of the material in
appellant's film was the
public domain, this would
not permit Rony to directly
copy appellant's film. Rony
could use a copy of the
original news-reel films
which were part of the
public domain, but he could
not copy appellant's copy
thereof. 'Others are free
to copy the original. They
are not free to copy the
copy.' Bleistein v.
Donaldson Lithographing
Co., 1903, 188 U.S. 239,
249, 23 S. Ct. 298, 299, 47
L. Ed. 460"
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The
trial court found that the films
were collected by independent
efforts.
Rony
received a judgment as compensation
for the cancelled television series
and associated libel.
See:
Citations and Case Summaries of
the Copyright Registration and
Renewal Web Site at:
http://chart.copyrightdata.com/c10C.html
The
complete court transcript is
available at:
http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/277/277.F2d.314.15916_1.html
See
also: U.S. Map Copyright
Litigation
at:
277
F. 2d 314 125 USPQ 262 32 C. O.
Bull.
32
This case concerns two rival
documentaries on the Russian
Revolution and what followed. In
one of them, a map was used to
aid in presenting the facts. This
case does not really concern
maps, but it was noted in passing
that maps in films are
copyrightable if the test of
originality is met.
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