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11th Circuit Sides With National Geographic in Copyright Case
- To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
- Subject: 11th Circuit Sides With National Geographic in Copyright Case
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@temple.edu>
- Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 23:26:20 EDT
- Reply-to: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
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Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 02:21:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Sue Fraser <xcschild@yahoo.com> To: Net-Gold <Net-Gold@yahoogroups.com> Subject: 11th Circuit Sides With National Geographic in Copyright Case R. Robin McDonald 07-02-2008 Law.com Back-to-back rulings by federal appellate courts in Atlanta and New York favoring the National Geographic Society will allow magazine and newspaper publishers to transfer their published archives to computer discs and sell them commercially without infringing on freelance contributors' copyrights. National Geographic won its dual victories after more than a decade of litigation in two federal circuits. The publisher of National Geographic has battled freelance writers and photographers over whether it must pay them additional royalties associated with the sale of "The Complete National Geographic" -- a digital version of the magazine's published archive. On Monday, Judge Rosemary Barkett, writing the majority opinion for a sharply divided en banc court of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the claims of a freelance Florida photographer whose work has been published in National Geographic. Barkett was joined in the majority by fellow circuit judges Joel F. Dubina, Susan H. Black, Edward E. Carnes, Stanley Marcus, William H. Pryor Jr. and Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch. Judge Frank M. Hull recused. The ruling turned on the extent to which publishers may reprint and distribute previously published photos without infringing on individual photographers' copyrights. Central to that ruling is the definition of a "collective work" to which a freelancer has contributed. A publisher, according to the en banc majority, may reproduce a freelance photographer's work in a reprint of the original collective work (such as a magazine, newspaper or encyclopedia) to which that photographer contributed; or a revision of that collective work; or a later collective work "in the same series." Reproduction of copyrighted photos in a new work without permission would constitute copyright infringement. The ruling turns on what constitutes an acceptable revision and what constitutes a new work in light of a 2001 landmark copyright ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. In that ruling, New York Times v. Tasini, the high court determined reprinting freelance writers' articles without permission in large computer databases such as Lexis-Nexis infringed freelancers' copyrights. This week, the 11th Circuit relied on the language of that ruling in deciding that although photographs could not be reprinted in computer databases without permission, they could be republished on CD-ROM or DVD in a reprint of the original work, (in this case, issues of National Geographic) without infringing freelance contributors' copyrights. <http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=3D1202422703800> The entire article can be read at the above URL [REQUIRES FREE SUBSCRIPTION] Sincerely, Sue Fraser xcschild@yahoo.com
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