Major Publishers Back National Geographic in Copyright Fight [International - Copyright]

The New York Times Co., Time Inc. and Newsweek Inc., among a dozen of the nation's largest publishers, have banded together with university presses, academic journals and national library associations to oppose a Florida freelance photographer whose 10-year battle to collect royalties from National Geographic could redefine the limits of copyright protection.

The publishers -- which also include Forbes, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune Co., Playboy Enterprises Inc., Hearst Corp., the Gannett Co. Inc., Duke University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press and the online legal archive JSTOR -- have petitioned the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta for permission to file amicus, or friend-of-the-court, briefs supporting The National Geographic Society, publisher of the 119-year-old magazine, National Geographic.

The publishers' attorneys argue that the U.S. Supreme Court's 2001 landmark copyright ruling, New York Times v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483, allows the publishers to place entire publication libraries on CD-ROM and then sell them without seeking permission from -- or paying additional royalties to -- the freelance authors and photographers whose works are reproduced in those collections.

Tasini was a win for freelance writers against publishers who wanted to sell their articles to online databases without paying the writers additional fees.

But National Geographic and its publisher supporters have seized on language in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's majority opinion in Tasini they say allows them to sell CD-ROMs and other products without violating the copyrights of freelance photographers.

A 2001 decision by the 11th Circuit, handed down three months before Tasini was issued, came down squarely in favor of Florida freelance photographer Jerry Greenberg, finding that National Geographic's CD magazine library was a "new product ... in a new medium for a new market." That case is called Greenberg I, No. 00-10510 (11th U.S. Cir.).

But this past June, a separate 11th Circuit panel looked at the Greenberg case again and, citing Ginsburg's language in the Tasini decision, reversed the 2001 panel and ruled for National Geographic. That case is Greenberg II, No. 05-16964 (11th U.S. Cir.).

The full 11th Circuit then vacated Greenberg II and agreed to hear the case en banc. The case has been scheduled for oral argument the week of Feb. 25.

Critical to Greenberg v. National Geographic Society is the U.S. Supreme Court's 2001 Tasini opinion and how it should be interpreted.

Dozens of publishers, libraries and universities now seeking to submit their views of the case to the 11th Circuit have signaled that the financial stakes stemming from Greenberg are significant.

After the 11th Circuit found in Greenberg I that National Geographic had infringed Greenberg's copyright by failing to secure his permission for the digital use of four of his photos, a Florida jury in 2004 awarded Greenberg $400,000. National Geographic had priced its CD library product at $119.99. Following Greenberg I, National Geographic had pulled the CD library from the market.

Greenberg v. National Geographic - the latest [Copyright, International]

After separate three-judge panels in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for -- and then against -- a freelance photographer suing the National Geographic Society over copyright claims, the full court has agreed to consider the case.

The Aug. 30 decision to vacate the latest ruling in Greenberg v. The National Geographic Society means that the 11th Circuit could reinstitute a conflict between the 11th and the 2nd Circuits about whether publishers, specifically National Geographic, may reproduce publications in digital CD-ROM format without paying more royalties to freelance photographers for additional use of their work. The U.S. Supreme Court tends to favor consideration of cases on issues in which circuit courts disagree.

The copyright litigation was first addressed by the 11th Circuit in 2001 in a decision penned by Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., the court's resident intellectual property expert. That opinion found in favor of freelance photographer Jerry Greenberg, whose photos had been published by National Geographic and then reproduced in its digital library. In similar cases in New York against National Geographic, the 2nd Circuit has taken the opposite stance, ruling that reproducing the magazine's library on CD-ROM does not violate freelancer copyrights.

Two months ago a new 11th Circuit panel overruled Birch's 2001 decision in the Greenberg case, saying instead that National Geographic should prevail. The latest decision was written by U.S. District Judge David G. Trager, a visiting senior judge from New York, which is part of the 2nd Circuit. He was joined by 11th Circuit Judge Rosemary Barkett and Senior Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch.

Trager's ruling also sidestepped a precedent which generally binds appellate panels to earlier circuit decisions addressing the same issue of law unless it has been overturned either by the entire 11th Circuit or by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Greenberg asked the full court for an en banc review, and a majority of the active judges voted to rehear the case. En banc orders do not identify how the judges voted, but this one noted that Judge Frank M. Hull recused and that Kravitch, who joined Birch's 2001 decision with Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat, would participate.

"You can imagine how gratified we were to hear about that," Greenberg's attorney, Norman Davis of the Miami firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, said last week of the en banc order. "It doesn't happen very often."

"Had the prior decision stayed in place, the case would essentially have been done," said Davis. "Now, it's not. I look forward to learning what issues they [the circuit judges] want briefed and to engaging in responding to those issues."

In response to the 11th Circuit action, the National Geographic Society released a statement saying that the organization and its attorneys "now look forward to presenting our arguments in this important case to the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and believe that the full court will agree with the three-judge panel and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that the National Geographic Society is entitled to make past issues of its magazine available in CD-ROM format without violating the copyright laws."

The Greenberg case raises on behalf of freelance photographers many of the same issues raised by freelance writers in another landmark copyright suit decided by the Supreme Court in 2001. That case, New York Times v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 233, favored freelance writers and came three months after the 11th Circuit panel ruled in favor of freelance photographer Greenberg.

In the closely watched Tasini case, freelance writers of articles previously published in newspapers and magazines brought copyright infringement claims against publishers and owners of electronic databases that had made the articles widely available via the Internet and services such as Lexis-Nexis. In a 7-2 opinion issued June 25, 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the writers.

For a decade, the Greenberg and Tasini cases have pitted publishers against freelance photographers and writers -- all of them seeking to define copyright law in a digital age. At stake are royalties and fees that publishers could be forced to share with freelancers whenever they reproduce and sell those freelancers' previously published works in merchandise designed for computer access.

In 2001 in the 11th Circuit, the Birch panel found for the photographers, specifically dismissing arguments offered by National Geographic that a 30-disc CD-ROM set containing reproductions of every National Geographic magazine was not a new product but was merely a reprint of a previously published work.

"The critical difference, from a copyright perspective, is that the computer, as opposed to the machines used for viewing microfilm and microfiche, requires the interaction of a computer program in order to accomplish the useful reproduction involved with the new medium," Birch wrote in what is now called Greenberg I. "These computer programs are themselves the subject matter of copyright, and may constitute original works of authorship, and thus present an additional dimension in copyright analysis."

Birch emphasized his point by attaching to 2001 opinion a copy of National Geographic's copyright application for the CD-ROM library.

$400,000 AWARD

On remand, a district judge in Florida, using Greenberg I as a guide, awarded Greenberg damages of $400,000. That ruling came in 2004, three years after Tasini. National Geographic appealed, resulting in the June opinion by Trager in what is called Greenberg II.

His panel sided with Trager's home circuit -- which since Tasini, has rejected claims against National Geographic by other freelance writers and photographers -- and bluntly labeled the earlier Birch opinion as "wrong."

The 2nd Circuit in those cases has interpreted Tasini as "an intervening (post-Greenberg I) change in the law" even though Trager acknowledged in his opinion that Tasini was decided on different facts than either Greenberg or the other National Geographic cases in New York.

After the en banc order was issued last week, Greenberg lawyer Davis said that an opinion issued by another 11th Circuit panel on Aug. 23 in an unrelated case has given him hope that the full court may restore Greenberg I.

In the case, which deals with maritime law, the panel showed that the court clearly frowns on reversing its own previous rulings, even in cases where a Supreme Court ruling has intervened.

The central question in Atlantic Sounding Co., Inc, v. Townsend, No. 06-13204, is whether the 11th Circuit can, or should, depart from a prior circuit ruling based on the Supreme Court's intervening decision in a similar case.

"We conclude that we may not," wrote Chief Judge J.L. Edmondson, joined by Edward E. Carnes and Senior Judge Peter T. Fay. "Under our prior panel precedent rule, a later panel may depart from an earlier panel's decision only when the intervening Supreme Court decision is 'clearly on point.'"

Edmondson added that the 11th Circuit had concluded in a 2003 case that "an intervening Supreme Court decision did not 'implicitly overrule' a prior circuit decision because the cases dealt with different issues and were not 'clearly consistent.'"

"The Supreme Court reminds us that '[t]here is, of course, an important difference between the holding in a case and the reasoning that supports that holding,'" Edmondson continued. "So, that the reasoning of an intervening high court decision is at odds with that of our prior decision is no basis for a panel to depart from our prior decision. As we have stated, [o]bedience to a Supreme Court decision is one thing, extrapolating from its implications a holding on an issue that was not before that Court in order to upend settled circuit law is another thing."

Copyright, Greenberg, and Tasini: a reversal [?]

Citing Supreme Court Precedent, 11th Circuit Reverses Major Copyright Ruling

'Greenberg' and 'Tasini' cases pit publishers against freelance photographers and writers

In a decision called "curious" by an intellectual property expert, a federal appellate panel in Atlanta has reversed its circuit's 6-year-old opinion in a major copyright case, declaring the ruling's mandate on behalf of freelance photographers to be "moot."

In doing so, the three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that expanded freelance writers' copyrights in a way that limited the copyright claims of freelance photographers.

The panel's June 13 ruling in Greenberg v. National Geographic Society II, 97-03924-CV, reversed a separate panel's 2001 opinion, Greenberg v. National Geographic Society I, 244F.3d1267. That decision had been authored by 11th Circuit Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., a noted copyright expert whose formal 11th Circuit portrait depicts him holding a copy of "Nimmer on Copyright," the definitive work on copyright law. Judges Gerald B. Tjoflat and R. Lanier Anderson III joined Birch in the 2001 ruling.

In reversing Greenberg I, the second appellate panel sidestepped a precedent which binds panels to an earlier circuit decision addressing the same issue of law unless it has been overturned either by the entire 11th Circuit or by the U.S. Supreme Court.

By declaring Greenberg I moot, the new panel -- Judge Rosemary Barkett, Senior Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch and David G. Trager, a visiting U.S. district judge from the 2nd Circuit in New York -- also resolved a long-standing conflict with the 2nd Circuit created by the Birch opinion. Trager wrote the Greenberg II opinion for the new panel.

Both cases deal with The National Geographic Society's placement of its entire magazine library on CD-ROM and selling it as "The Complete National Geographic."

In the 2001 case, Birch found that National Geographic infringed the copyright of Florida freelance photographer Jerry Greenberg. Sixty-four of Greenberg's photos had appeared in issues of the National Geographic. One of those published photos also was included in an animated photo montage designed exclusively for the CD-ROM.

But in nearly identical cases in New York that were brought against National Geographic by other freelance writers and photographers, 2nd Circuit judges have taken the opposite tack.

In Greenberg II, Trager asserted that the new 11th Circuit panel on which he sat had authority to overturn Greenberg I if an intervening Supreme Court case overruled a prior panel decision, or if "the rationale the Supreme Court uses in an intervening case directly contradicts the analysis this court has used in a related area, and establishes that this Court's current rule is wrong."

The intervening ruling on which Trager rested Greenberg II was the Supreme Court's 2001 opinion in New York Times v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 233.

In Tasini, the high court found that the Times' sales of its published news articles to online databases such as Lexis and Westlaw infringed the copyrights of its freelance writers whose contracts had never contemplated the advent of digital databases.

This week, Lawrence Nodine, a partner at intellectual property boutique Needle & Rosenberg, called the Greenberg II ruling "curious" for several reasons.

"Leave out for a second, the sitting 2nd Circuit judge," he said. "The rule is that you are bound by previous panel decisions of the circuit that should only be reversed en banc."

While an appellate panel would have authority to reverse a previous panel if there were a Supreme Court decision "on point," Nodine suggested that Tasini was based on a different set of facts.

And dicta -- any explanatory commentary included in the high court opinion that does not directly address the facts of the case under review -- "ought not entitle the panel [in Greenberg II] to disregard the previous decision," Nodine said.

"Whether or not the [Greenberg II] panel could reverse without an en banc [hearing] is a very interesting question."

For a decade, the Greenberg and Tasini cases have pitted publishers against freelance photographers and writers -- all of them seeking to define copyright law in the digital age. At stake are royalties and fees that publishers could be forced to share with freelancers whenever they reproduce and sell those freelancers' previously published works in merchandise designed for computer access.

As Birch noted in 2001 during oral argument in Greenberg I, "All this is about who gets the money, whether you [publishers] can get the money or have to share it with some author."

Florida lawyer Norman Davis of the Miami firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, who represents Greenberg, insisted that Tasini "has no relevance whatsoever to Greenberg I" and was not a proper basis for reconsidering and then mooting the Birch opinion.

Davis added that his client has not decided whether to ask the 11th Circuit to reconsider Greenberg II en banc.

In an appellate brief in Greenberg II, Davis suggested that the 2nd Circuit's rulings in other National Geographic cases "set up a conflict" with Birch's 2001 opinion "through the misapplication of Tasini" and argued that "any resolution of the conflict between the two circuits should be left to the Supreme Court."

National Geographic Society executive vice president Terrence B. Adamson -- a former Atlanta attorney who was a key assistant to then-Attorney General Griffin B. Bell and remains President Carter's longtime personal lawyer -- said he was "pleased and quite delighted" by Greenberg II.

"This is a very important case," he said. "It wasn't that we were selling a lot of product, but it is our archive. There are now almost 120 years of National Geographic. It's our whole history and archive of what this organization has been about."

The CD set, Adamson asserted, is not a new use of formerly published issues. "It's the same use. ... because the practice had been for 40 to 50 years to do microfilm and microfiche, which everyone understood" and which required no additional royalty payments to freelancers. "It's the same result if you put it on CD-ROM, or DVD."

The Tasini case was one of the most widely watched copyright cases to reach the Supreme Court in years. Freelance authors of articles previously published in newspapers and magazines, led by Jonathan Tasini, brought claims of copyright infringement against publishers and owners of electronic databases that had made the articles widely available via the Internet.

A federal district court found for the defendant publishers but was reversed by the 2nd Circuit, which ruled in favor of the writers. In a 7-2 opinion issued June 25, 2001, the high court affirmed the 2nd Circuit's appellate ruling.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg determined that electronic and CD-ROM databases containing individual articles from multiple editions of magazines, newspapers and other periodicals could not be considered "revisions" or revised editions of the previously published issues.

"[T]he Databases reproduce and distribute articles standing alone and not in context, not 'as part of that particular collective work' to which the author contributed, 'as part of ... any revision' thereof or 'as part of ... any later collective work in the same series,'" she wrote, citing federal copyright law.

Under the terms of Section 201(c) of the 1976 revisions to the Copyright Act of 1909, Ginsburg wrote, "A publisher could reprint a contribution from one issue in a later issue of its magazine, and could reprint an article from one edition of an encyclopedia in a later revision of it, but could not revise the contribution itself or include it in a new anthology or an entirely different collective work. ...

"If there is demand for a freelance article standing alone or in a new collection, the Copyright Act allows the freelancer to benefit from that demand; after authorizing initial publication, the freelancer may also sell the article to others," she noted.

"It would scarcely preserve the author's copyright in a contribution as contemplated by Congress," Ginsburg concluded, "if a print publisher, without the author's permission, could reproduce or distribute discrete copies of the contribution in isolation or within new collective works. The publishers' view that inclusion of the articles in the databases lies within the 'privilege of reproducing and distributing the [articles] as part of ... [a] revision of that collective work,' is unacceptable."

The majority in Tasini also dismissed an analogy offered by publishers that digital databases were akin to microfilm and microfiche reprints, which have not prompted copyright infringement claims.

Ginsburg noted that databases "do not perceptibly reproduce articles as part of the collective work to which the author contributed or as part of any 'revision' thereof. ... We would reach the same conclusion if the Times sent intact newspapers to the electronic publishers."

The Greenberg cases stem from The National Geographic Society's creation of "The Complete National Geographic" -- a 30-disc CD-ROM set containing complete reproductions of every issue of National Geographic published in the magazine's history. Four of those issues included photos by Greenberg, who had reclaimed his copyrights from the National Geographic Society after publication.

"The Complete National Geographic" was powered by copyrighted software programs and included -- in addition to the magazine reproductions -- an animated montage of photos set to music and a Kodak commercial. The National Geographic registered a separate, and new, copyright for the CD-ROM set in 1997.

In Greenberg I, Birch -- writing for the panel -- stated that "common-sense copyright analysis compels the conclusion" that the National Geographic, in collaboration with a software company, has created "a new product ... in a new medium, for a new market that far transcends any privilege of revision or other mere reproduction" envisioned by federal copyright law.

Birch specifically dismissed arguments offered by National Geographic lawyers that the CD-ROM sets were merely a republication of a pre-existing work no different from converting the magazines to microfilm.

"[T]he critical difference, from a copyright perspective, is that the computer, as opposed to the machines used for viewing microfilm and microfiche, requires the interaction of a computer program in order to accomplish the useful reproduction involved with the new medium," Birch wrote. "These computer programs are themselves the subject matter of copyright, and may constitute original works of authorship, and thus present an additional dimension in the copyright analysis."

On remand, a district judge in Florida, using Greenberg I as a guide, awarded Greenberg $400,000 in 2004, three years after Tasini.

After the Tasini ruling, National Geographic again appealed, resulting in last week's ruling.

In Greenberg II, Trager, joined by Kravitch and Barkett, sided with his home circuit, which since Tasini has rejected claims against National Geographic by other freelance writers and photographers.