International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918)
MR. JUSTICE PITNEY delivered the opinion of the Court.
The parties are competitors in the gathering and distribution of news and its publication for profit in newspapers throughout the United States. The Associated Press, which was complainant in the district court, is a cooperative organization, incorporated under the Membership Corporations Law of the State of New York, its members being individuals who are either proprietors or representatives of about 950 daily newspapers published in all parts of the United States. That a corporation may be organized under that act for the purpose of gathering news for the use and benefit of its members and for publication in newspapers owned or represented by them is recognized by an amendment enacted in 1901 (Laws N.Y.1901, c. 436). Complainant gathers in all parts of the world, by means of various instrumentalities of its own, by exchange with its members, and by other appropriate means, news and intelligence of current and recent events of interest to newspaper readers and distributes it daily to its members for publication in their newspapers. The cost of the service, amounting approximately to $3,500,000 per annum, is assessed upon the members and becomes a part of their costs of operation, to be recouped, presumably with profit, through the publication of their several newspapers. Under complainant’s bylaws, each member agrees upon assuming membership that news received through complainant’s service is received exclusively for publication in a particular newspaper, language, and place specified in the certificate of membership, that no other use of it shall be permitted, and that no member shall furnish or permit anyone in his employ or connected with his newspaper to furnish any of complainant’s news in advance of publication to any person not a member. And each member is required to gather the local news of his district and supply it to the Associated Press, and to no one else.
Defendant is a corporation organized under the laws of the State of New Jersey, whose business is the gathering and selling of news to its customers and clients, consisting of newspapers published throughout the United States, under contracts by which they pay certain amounts at stated times for defendant’s service. It has widespread news-gathering agencies; the cost of its operations amounts, it is said, to more than $2,000,000 per annum, and it serves about 400 newspapers located in the various cities of the United States and abroad, a few of which are represented, also, in the membership of the Associated Press.
The parties are in the keenest competition between themselves in the distribution of news throughout the United States, and so, as a rule, are the newspapers that they serve, in their several districts.
Complainant in its bill, defendant in its answer, have set forth in almost identical terms the rather obvious circumstances and conditions under which their business is conducted. The value of the service, and of the news furnished, depends upon the promptness of transmission, as well as upon the accuracy and impartiality of the news, it being essential that the news be transmitted to members or subscribers as early or earlier than similar information can be furnished to competing newspapers by other news services, and that the news furnished by each agency shall not be furnished to newspapers which do not contribute to the expense of gathering it. And further, to quote from the answer:
Prompt knowledge and publication of worldwide news is essential to the conduct of a modern newspaper, and, by reason of the enormous expense incident to the gathering and distribution of such news, the only practical way in which a proprietor of a newspaper can obtain the same is either through cooperation with a considerable number of other newspaper proprietors in the work of collecting and distributing such news, and the equitable division with them of the expenses thereof, or by the purchase of such news from some existing agency engaged in that business.
The bill was filed to restrain the pirating of complainant’s news by defendant in three ways: first, by bribing employees of newspapers published by complainant’s members to furnish Associated Press news to defendant before publication, for transmission by telegraph and telephone to defendant’s clients for publication by them; second, by inducing Associated Press members to violate its bylaws and permit defendant to obtain news before publication; and, third, by copying news from bulletin boards and from early editions of complainant’s newspapers and selling this, either bodily or after rewriting it, to defendant’s customers.
The district court, upon consideration of the bill and answer, with voluminous affidavits on both sides, granted a preliminary injunction under the first and second heads, but refused at that stage to restrain the systematic practice, admittedly pursued by defendant, of taking news bodily from the bulletin boards and early editions of complainant’s newspapers and selling it as its own. The court expressed itself as satisfied that this practice amounted to unfair trade, but, as the legal question was one of first impression, it considered that the allowance of an injunction should await the outcome of an appeal. 240 F. 983, 996. Both parties having appealed, the circuit court of appeals sustained the injunction order so far as it went, and, upon complainant’s appeal, modified it and remanded the cause with directions to issue an injunction also against any bodily taking of the words or substance of complainant’s news until its commercial value as news had passed away. 245 F. 244, 253. The present writ of certiorari was then allowed. 245 U.S. 644.
The only matter that has been argued before us is whether defendant may lawfully be restrained from appropriating news taken from bulletins issued by complainant or any of its members, or from newspapers published by them, for the purpose of selling it to defendant’s clients. Complainant asserts that defendant’s admitted course of conduct in this regard both violates complainant’s property right in the news and constitutes unfair competition in business. And notwithstanding the case has proceeded only to the stage of a preliminary injunction, we have deemed it proper to consider the underlying questions, since they go to the very merits of the action and are presented upon facts that are not in dispute. As presented in argument, these questions are: (1) whether there is any property in news; (2) whether, if there be property in news collected for the purpose of being published, it survives the instant of its publication in the first newspaper to which it is communicated by the news gatherer, and (3) whether defendant’s admitted course of conduct in appropriating for commercial use matter taken from bulletins or early editions of Associated Press publications constitutes unfair competition in trade.
The federal jurisdiction was invoked because of diversity of citizenship, not upon the ground that the suit arose under the copyright or other laws of the United States. Complainant’s news matter is not copyrighted. It is said that it could not, in practice, be copyrighted, because of the large number of dispatches that are sent daily, and, according to complainant’s contention, news is not within the operation of the copyright act. Defendant, while apparently conceding this, nevertheless invokes the analogies of the law of literary property and copyright, insisting as its principal contention that, assuming complainant has a right of property in its news, it can be maintained (unless the copyright act by complied with) only by being kept secret and confidential, and that, upon the publication with complainant’s consent of uncopyrighted news of any of complainant’s members in a newspaper or upon a bulletin board, the right of property is lost, and the subsequent use of the news by the public or by defendant for any purpose whatever becomes lawful.
A preliminary objection to the form in which the suit is brought may be disposed of at the outset. It is said that the circuit court of appeals granted relief upon considerations applicable to particular members of the Associated Press, and that this was erroneous because the suit was brought by complainant as a corporate entity, and not by its members, the argument being that their interests cannot be protected in this proceeding any more than the individual rights of a stockholder can be enforced in an action brought by the corporation. From the averments of the bill, however, it is plain that the suit in substance was brought for the benefit of complainant’s members, and that they would be proper parties, and, except for their numbers, perhaps necessary parties. Complainant is a proper party to conduct the suit as representing their interest, and since no specific objection, based upon the want of parties, appears to have been made below, we will treat the objection as waived. See Equity Rules 38, 43, 44.
In considering the general question of property in news matter, it is necessary to recognize its dual character, distinguishing between the substance of the information and the particular form or collocation of words in which the writer has communicated it.
No doubt news articles often possess a literary quality, and are the subject of literary property at the common law; nor do we question that such an article, as a literary production, is the subject of copyright by the terms of the act as it now stands. In an early case, at the circuit, Mr. Justice Thompson held in effect that a newspaper was not within the protection of the copyright acts of 1790 and 1802. Clayton v. Stone, 2 Paine 382, 5 Fed.Cas. No. 2,872. But the present act is broader; it provides that the works for which copyright may be secured shall include "all the writings of an author," and specifically mentions "periodicals, including newspapers." Act of March 4, 1909, c. 320, §§ 4 and 5, 35 Stat. 1075, 1076. Evidently this admits to copyright a contribution to a newspaper, notwithstanding it also may convey news, and such is the practice of the copyright office, as the newspapers of the day bear witness. See Copyright Office Bulletin No. 15 (1917) pp. 7, 14, 16, 17.
But the news element -- the information respecting current events contained in the literary production -- is not the creation of the writer, but is a report of matters that ordinarily are publici juris; it is the history of the day. It is not to be supposed that the framers of the Constitution, when they empowered Congress
to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
(Const. Art. I, § 8, par. 8), intended to confer upon one who might happen to be the first to report a historic event the exclusive right for any period to spread the knowledge of it.
We need spend no time, however, upon the general question of property in news matter at common law, or the application of the copyright act, since it seems to us the case must turn upon the question of unfair competition in business. And, in our opinion, this does not depend upon any general right of property analogous to the common law right of the proprietor of an unpublished work to prevent its publication without his consent; nor is it foreclosed by showing that the benefits of the copyright act have been waived. We are dealing here not with restrictions upon publication, but with the very facilities and processes of publication. The peculiar value of news is in the spreading of it while it is fresh, and it is evident that a valuable property interest in the news, as news, cannot be maintained by keeping it secret. Besides, except for matters improperly disclosed, or published in breach of trust or confidence, or in violation of law, none of which is involved in this branch of the case, the news of current events may be regarded as common property. What we are concerned with is the business of making it known to the world, in which both parties to the present suit are engaged. That business consists in maintaining a prompt, sure, steady, and reliable service designed to place the daily events of the world at the breakfast table of the millions at a price that, while of trifling moment to each reader, is sufficient in the aggregate to afford compensation for the cost of gathering and distributing it, with the added profit so necessary as an incentive to effective action in the commercial world. The service thus performed for newspaper readers is not only innocent but extremely useful in itself, and indubitably constitutes a legitimate business. The parties are competitors in this field, and, on fundamental principles, applicable here as elsewhere, when the rights or privileges of the one are liable to conflict with those of the other, each party is under a duty so to conduct its own business as not unnecessarily or unfairly to injure that of the other. Hitchman Coal & Coke Co. v. Mitchell, 245 U.S. 229, 254.
Obviously the question of what is unfair competition in business must be determined with particular reference to the character and circumstances of the business. The question here is not so much the rights of either party as against the public, but their rights as between themselves. See Morison v. Moat, 9 Hare 241, 258. And, although we may and do assume that neither party has any remaining property interest as against the public in uncopyrighted news matter after the moment of its first publication, it by no means follows that there is no remaining property interest in it as between themselves. For, to both of them alike, news matter, however little susceptible of ownership or dominion in the absolute sense, is stock in trade, to be gathered at the cost of enterprise, organization, skill, labor, and money, and to be distributed and sold to those who will pay money for it, as for any other merchandise. Regarding the news therefore as but the material out of which both parties are seeking to make profits at the same time and in the same field, we hardly can fail to recognize that for this purpose, and as between them, it must be regarded as quasi-property, irrespective of the rights of either as against the public.
In order to sustain the jurisdiction of equity over the controversy, we need not affirm any general and absolute property in the news as such. The rule that a court of equity concerns itself only in the protection of property rights treats any civil right of a pecuniary nature as a property right (In re Sawyer, 124 U.S. 200, 210; In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564, 593), and the right to acquire property by honest labor or the conduct of a lawful business is as much entitled to protection as the right to guard property already acquired (Truax v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33, 37-38; Brennan v. United Hatters, 73 N.J.L. 729, 742;Barr v. Essex Trades Council, 53 N.J.Eq. 101). It is this right that furnishes the basis of the jurisdiction in the ordinary case of unfair competition.
The question whether one who has gathered general information or news at pains and expense for the purpose of subsequent publication through the press has such an interest in its publication as may be protected from interference has been raised many times, although never, perhaps, in the precise form in which it is now presented.
Board of Trade v. Christie Grain & Stock Co., 198 U.S. 236, 250, related to the distribution of quotations of prices on dealings upon a board of trade, which were collected by plaintiff and communicated on confidential terms to numerous persons under a contract not to make them public. This Court held that, apart from certain special objections that were overruled, plaintiff’s collection of quotations was entitled to the protection of the law; that, like a trade secret, plaintiff might keep to itself the work done at its expense, and did not lose its right by communicating the result to persons, even if many, in confidential relations to itself, under a contract not to make it public, and that strangers should be restrained from getting at the knowledge by inducing a breach of trust.
In National Tel. News Co. v. Western Union Tel. Co., 119 F. 294, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit dealt with news matter gathered and transmitted by a telegraph company, and consisting merely of a notation of current events having but a transient value due to quick transmission and distribution, and, while declaring that this was not copyrightable although printed on a tape by tickers in the offices of the recipients, and that it was a commercial, not a literary, product, nevertheless held that the business of gathering and communicating the news -- the service of purveying it -- was a legitimate business, meeting a distinctive commercial want and adding to the facilities of the business world, and partaking of the nature of property in a sense that entitled it to the protection of a court of equity against piracy.
Other cases are cited, but none that we deem it necessary to mention.
Not only do the acquisition and transmission of news require elaborate organization and a large expenditure of money, skill, and effort; not only has it an exchange value to the gatherer, dependent chiefly upon its novelty and freshness, the regularity of the service, its reputed reliability and thoroughness, and its adaptability to the public needs; but also, as is evident, the news has an exchange value to one who can misappropriate it.
The peculiar features of the case arise from the fact that, while novelty and freshness form so important an element in the success of the business, the very processes of distribution and publication necessarily occupy a good deal of time. Complainant’s service, as well as defendant’s, is a daily service to daily newspapers; most of the foreign news reaches this country at the Atlantic seaboard, principally at the City of New York, and because of this, and of time differentials due to the earth’s rotation, the distribution of news matter throughout the country is principally from east to west; and, since in speed the telegraph and telephone easily outstrip the rotation of the earth, it is a simple matter for defendant to take complainant’s news from bulletins or early editions of complainant’s members in the eastern cities and, at the mere cost of telegraphic transmission, cause it to be published in western papers issued at least as early as those served by complainant. Besides this, and irrespective of time differentials, irregularities in telegraphic transmission on different lines, and the normal consumption of time in printing and distributing the newspaper, result in permitting pirated news to be placed in the hands of defendant’s readers sometimes simultaneously with the service of competing Associated Press papers, occasionally even earlier.
Defendant insists that when, with the sanction and approval of complainant and as the result of the use of its news for the very purpose for which it is distributed, a portion of complainant’s members communicate it to the general public by posting it upon bulletin boards so that all may read, or by issuing it to newspapers and distributing it indiscriminately, complainant no longer has the right to control the use to be made of it; that, when it thus reaches the light of day, it becomes the common possession of all to whom it is accessible, and that any purchaser of a newspaper has the right to communicate the intelligence which it contains to anybody and for any purpose, even for the purpose of selling it for profit to newspapers published for profit in competition with complainant’s members.
The fault in the reasoning lies in applying as a test the right of the complainant as against the public, instead of considering the rights of complainant and defendant, competitors in business, as between themselves. The right of the purchaser of a single newspaper to spread knowledge of its contents gratuitously, for any legitimate purpose not unreasonably interfering with complainant’s right to make merchandise of it, may be admitted, but to transmit that news for commercial use, in competition with complainant -- which is what defendant has done and seeks to justify -- is a very different matter. In doing this, defendant, by its very act, admits that it is taking material that has been acquired by complainant as the result of organization and the expenditure of labor, skill, and money, and which is salable by complainant for money, and that defendant, in appropriating it and selling it as its own, is endeavoring to reap where it has not sown, and by disposing of it to newspapers that are competitors of complainant’s members, is appropriating to itself the harvest of those who have sown. Stripped of all disguises, the process amounts to an unauthorized interference with the normal operation of complainant’s legitimate business precisely at the point where the profit is to be reaped, in order to divert a material portion of the profit from those who have earned it to those who have not, with special advantage to defendant in the competition because of the fact that it is not burdened with any part of the expense of gathering the news. The transaction speaks for itself, and a court of equity ought not to hesitate long in characterizing it as unfair competition in business.
The underlying principle is much the same as that which lies at the base of the equitable theory of consideration in the law of trusts -- that he who has fairly paid the price should have the beneficial use of the property. Pom.Eq. Jur. § 981. It is no answer to say that complainant spends its money for that which is too fugitive or evanescent to be the subject of property. That might, and for the purposes of the discussion we are assuming that it would, furnish an answer in a common law controversy. But, in a court of equity, where the question is one of unfair competition, if that which complainant has acquired fairly at substantial cost may be sold fairly at substantial profit, a competitor who is misappropriating it for the purpose of disposing of it to his own profit and to the disadvantage of complainant cannot be heard to say that it is too fugitive or evanescent to be regarded as property. It has all the attributes of property necessary for determining that a misappropriation of it by a competitor is unfair competition because contrary to good conscience.
The contention that the news is abandoned to the public for all purposes when published in the first newspaper is untenable. Abandonment is a question of intent, and the entire organization of the Associated Press negatives such a purpose. The cost of the service would be prohibitive if the reward were to be so limited. No single newspaper, no small group of newspapers, could sustain the expenditure. Indeed, it is one of the most obvious results of defendant’s theory that, by permitting indiscriminate publication by anybody and everybody for purposes of profit in competition with the news-gatherer, it would render publication profitless, or so little profitable as in effect to cut off the service by rendering the cost prohibitive in comparison with the return. The practical needs and requirements of the business are reflected in complainant’s bylaws which have been referred to. Their effect is that publication by each member must be deemed not by any means an abandonment of the news to the world for any and all purposes, but a publication for limited purposes; for the benefit of the readers of the bulletin or the newspaper as such; not for the purpose of making merchandise of it as news, with the result of depriving complainant’s other members of their reasonable opportunity to obtain just returns for their expenditures.
It is to be observed that the view we adopt does not result in giving to complainant the right to monopolize either the gathering or the distribution of the news, or, without complying with the copyright act, to prevent the reproduction of its news articles, but only postpones participation by complainant’s competitor in the processes of distribution and reproduction of news that it has not gathered, and only to the extent necessary to prevent that competitor from reaping the fruits of complainant’s efforts and expenditure, to the partial exclusion of complainant. and in violation of the principle that underlies the maxim "sic utere tuo," etc.
It is said that the elements of unfair competition are lacking because there is no attempt by defendant to palm off its goods as those of the complainant, characteristic of the most familiar, if not the most typical, cases of unfair competition. Howe Scale Co. v. Wyckoff, Seamans, & Benedict, 198 U.S. 118, 140. But we cannot concede that the right to equitable relief is confined to that class of cases. In the present case, the fraud upon complainant’s rights is more direct and obvious. Regarding news matter as the mere material from which these two competing parties are endeavoring to make money, and treating it therefore as quasi-property for the purposes of their business because they are both selling it as such, defendant’s conduct differs from the ordinary case of unfair competition in trade principally in this -- that, instead of selling its own goods as those of complainant, it substitutes misappropriation in the place of misrepresentation, and sells complainant’s goods as its own.
Besides the misappropriation, there are elements of imitation, of false pretense, in defendant’s practices. The device of rewriting complainant’s news articles, frequently resorted to, carries its own comment. The habitual failure to give credit to complainant for that which is taken is significant. Indeed, the entire system of appropriating complainant’s news and transmitting it as a commercial product to defendant’s clients and patrons amounts to a false representation to them and to their newspaper readers that the news transmitted is the result of defendant’s own investigation in the field. But these elements, although accentuating the wrong, are not the essence of it. It is something more than the advantage of celebrity of which complainant is being deprived.
The doctrine of unclean hands is invoked as a bar to relief, it being insisted that defendant’s practices against which complainant seeks an injunction are not different from the practice attributed to complainant of utilizing defendant’s news published by its subscribers. At this point, it becomes necessary to consider a distinction that is drawn by complainant, and, as we understand it, was recognized by defendant also in the submission of proofs in the district court, between two kinds of use that may be made by one news agency of news taken from the bulletins and newspapers of the other. The first is the bodily appropriation of a statement of fact or a news article, with or without rewriting, but without independent investigation or other expense. This form of pirating was found by both courts to have been pursued by defendant systematically with respect to complainant’s news, and against it the circuit court of appeals granted an injunction. This practice complainant denies having pursued, and the denial was sustained by the finding of the district court. It is not contended by defendant that the finding can be set aside upon the proofs as they now stand. The other use is to take the news of a rival agency as a "tip" to be investigated, and, if verified by independent investigation, the news thus gathered is sold. This practice complainant admits that it has pursued, and still is willing that defendant shall employ.
Both courts held that complainant could not be debarred on the ground of unclean hands upon the score of pirating defendant’s news, because not shown to be guilty of sanctioning this practice.
As to securing "tips" from a competing news agency, the district court (240 F. 991, 995), while not sanctioning the practice, found that both parties had adopted it in accordance with common business usage in the belief that their conduct was technically lawful, and hence did not find in it any sufficient ground for attributing unclean hands to complainant. The circuit court of appeals (245 F. 247) found that the tip habit, though discouraged by complainant, was "incurably journalistic," and that there was "no difficulty in discriminating between the utilization of tips and the bodily appropriation of another’s labor in accumulating and stating information."
We are inclined to think a distinction may be drawn between the utilization of tips and the bodily appropriation of news matter, either in its original form or after rewriting and without independent investigation and verification; whatever may appear at the final hearing, the proofs as they now stand recognize such a distinction; both parties avowedly recognize the practice of taking tips, and neither party alleges it to be unlawful or to amount to unfair competition in business. In a line of English cases, a somewhat analogous practice has been held not to amount to an infringement of the copyright of a directory or other book containing compiled information. In Kelly v. Morris, L.R. 1 Eq. 697, 701, 702, Vice Chancellor Sir William Page Wood (afterwards Lord Hatherly), dealing with such a case, said that defendant was
not entitled to take one word of the information previously published without independently working out the matter for himself, so as to arrive at the same result from the same common sources of information, and the only use that he can legitimately make of a previous publication is to verify his own calculations and results when obtained.
This was followed by Vice Chancellor Giffard, in Morris v. Ashbee, L.R. 7 Eq. 34, where he said:
In a case such as this, no one has a right to take the results of the labour and expense incurred by another for the purposes of a rival publication, and thereby save himself the expense and labour of working out and arriving at these results by some independent road.
A similar view was adopted by Lord Chancellor Hatherly and the former Vice Chancellor, then Giffard, L.J., in Pike v. Nicholas, L.R. 5 Ch.App.Cas. 251, and shortly afterwards by the latter judge in Morris v. Wright, L.R. 5 Ch.App.Cas. 279, 287, where he said, commenting upon Pike v. Nicholas:
It was a perfectly legitimate course for the defendant to refer to the plaintiff’s book, and if, taking that book as his guide, he went to the original authorities and compiled his book from them, he made no unfair or improper use of the plaintiff’s book, and so here, if the fact be that Mr. Wright used the plaintiff’s book in order to guide himself to the persons on whom it would be worth his while to call, and for no other purpose, he made a perfectly legitimate use of the plaintiff’s book.
A like distinction was recognized by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Edward Thompson Co. v. American Law Book Co., 122 F. 922, and in West Publishing Co. v. Edward Thompson Co., 176 F. 833, 838.
In the case before us, in the present state of the pleadings and proofs, we need go no further than to hold, as we do, that the admitted pursuit by complainant of the practice of taking news items published by defendant’s subscribers as tips to be investigated, and, if verified, the result of the investigation to be sold -- the practice having been followed by defendant also, and by news agencies generally -- is not shown to be such as to constitute an unconscientious or inequitable attitude towards its adversary so as to fix upon complainant the taint of unclean hands, and debar it on this ground from the relief to which it is otherwise entitled.
There is some criticism of the injunction that was directed by the district court upon the going down of the mandate from the circuit court of appeals. In brief, it restrains any taking or gainfully using of the complainant’s news, either bodily or in substance, from bulletins issued by the complainant or any of its members, or from editions of their newspapers, "until its commercial value as news to the complainant and all of its members has passed away." The part complained of is the clause we have italicized, but if this be indefinite, it is no more so than the criticism. Perhaps it would be better that the terms of the injunction be made specific, and so framed as to confine the restraint to an extent consistent with the reasonable protection of complainant’s newspapers, each in its own area and for a specified time after its publication, against the competitive use of pirated news by defendant’s customers. But the case presents practical difficulties, and we have not the materials, either in the way of a definite suggestion of amendment or in the way of proofs, upon which to frame a specific injunction; hence, while not expressing approval of the form adopted by the district court, we decline to modify it at this preliminary stage of the case, and will leave that court to deal with the matter upon appropriate application made to it for the purpose.
The decree of the Circuit court of Appeals will be
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE CLARKE took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
1. See American Newspaper Annual and Directory (1918) pp. 4, 10, 1193-1212.
2. The Associated Press, by Frank B. Noyes, Sen.Doc. No. 27, 63d Congress, First Session. In a brief filed in this Court by counsel for the Associated Press, the number of its members is stated to be 1030. Some members of the Associated Press are also subscribers to the International News Service.
Strictly, the member is not the publishing concern, but an individual who is the sole or part owner of a newspaper, or an executive officer of a company which owns one. By-laws, Article II, § 1.
3. Board of Trade of City of Chicago v. Tucker, 221 F. 305; Board of Trade of City of Chicago v. Price, 213 F. 336; McDearmott Commission Co. v. Board of Trade of City of Chicago, 146 F. 961; Board of Trade v. Cella Commission Co., 145 F. 28; National Tel. News Co. v. Western Union Tel. Co., 119 F. 294; Illinois Commission Co. v. Cleveland Tel. Co., 119 F. 301; Board of Trade v. Hadden-Krull Co., 109 F. 705; Cleveland Tel. Co. v. Stone, 105 F. 794; Board of Trade v. C. B. Thomson Commission Co., 103 F. 902; Kiernan v. Manhattan Quotation Telegraph Co., 50 How.Prac. 194. The bill in F. W. Dodge Co. v. Construction Information Co., 183 Mass. 62, was expressly based on breach of contract or of trust. It has been suggested that a Board of Trade has a right of property in its quotations because the facts reported originated in its exchange. The point has been mentioned several times in the cases, but no great importance seems to have been attached to it.
4. In Exchange Telegraph Co., Ltd. v. Howard, 22 Times Law Rep. 375, 377, it is intimated that it would be perfectly permissible for the defendant to take the score from a newspaper supplied by the plaintiff and publish it. And it is suggested in Exchange Telegraph Co., Ltd. v. Central News, Ltd., [1897] 2 Ch. 48, 54, that there are sources from which the defendant might be able to get the information collected by the plaintiff and publish it without committing any wrong. Copinger, Law of Copyright (5th ed.) p. 35, explains the Gregory case on the basis of the breach of confidence involved. Richardson, Law of Copyright, p. 39, also inclines to put the case "on the footing of implied confidence."
5. Ferris v. Frohman, 223 U.S. 424; American Tobacco Co. v. Werckmeister, 207 U.S. 284, 299; Universal Film Mfg. Co. v. Copperman, 218 F. 577; Werckmeister v. American Lithographic Co., 134 F. 321; Drummond v. Altemus, 60 F. 338; Boucicault v. Hart, 13 Blatchf. 47; Crowe v. Aiken, 2 Biss. 208, Fed.Cas. No. 3441; Boucicault v. Fox, 5 Blatchf. 87, Fed.Cas. No. 1691; Bartlett v. Crittenden, 5 McLean, 32, Fed.Cas. No. 1,076; Bartlett v. Crittenden, 4 McLean, 300, Fed.Cas. No. 1082; Tompkins v. Halleck, 133 Mass. 32; Aronson v. Baker, 43 N.J.Eq. 365; Caird v. Sime, L.R. 12 App.Cas. 326; Nicols v. Pitman, L.R. 26 Ch.D. 374; Abernethy v. Hutchinson, 3 L.J. (O. S.) Ch. 209; Turner v. Robinson, 10 Ir.Eq.Rep. 121.
6. Compare Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co., 188 U.S. 239, 250; Higgins v. Keuffel, 140 U.S. 428, 432; Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 58-60; Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 105-106; Clayton v. Stone, 2 Paine, 382, Fed.Cas. No. 2,872; National Tel. News Co. v. Western Union Tel. Co., 119 F. 294, 296-298; Banks Law Pub. Co. v.Lawyers’ Cooperative Pub. Co., 169 F. 386, 391.
7. Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99; Perris v. Hexamer, 99 U.S. 674; Barnes v. Miner, 122 F. 480, 491; Burnell v. Chown, 69 F. 993; Tate v. Fullbrook, [1908] 1 K.B. 821; Chilton v. Progress Printing & Publishing Co., [1895] 2 Ch. 29, 34; Kenrick & Co. v.Lawrence & Co., L.R. 25 Q.B.D. 99; Pike v. Nicholas, L.R. 5 Ch.App. 251.
8. Bristol v. Equitable Life Assurance Society, 132 N.Y. 264; Haskins v. Ryan, 71 N.J.Eq. 575.
9. Jewelers’ mercantile Agency v. Jewelers’ Publishing Co., 155 N.Y. 241; Wagner v. Conried, 125 F. 798, 801; Larrowe-Loisette v. O’Loughlin, 88 F. 896.
10. See cases in note 5, supra; Richardson, Law of Copyright, p. 128.
11. Flagg Manufacturing Co. v. Holway, 178 Mass. 83; Bristol v. Equitable Life Assurance Society, 132 N.Y. 264; Keystone Type Foundry v. Portland Publishing Co., 186 F. 690.
12. Chadwick v. Covell, 151 Mass.190; Tabor v. Hoffman, 118 N.Y. 30, 36; James v. James, L.R. 13 Eq. 421. Even when knowledge is compiled, as in a dictionary, and copyrighted, the suggestions and sources therein may be freely used by a later compiler. The copyright protection merely prevents his taking the ultimate data while avoiding the labor and expense involved in compiling them. Pike v. Nicholas, L.R. 5 Ch.App. 251; Morris v. Wright, L.R. 5 Ch.App. 279; Edward Thompson Co. v. American Law Book Co., 122 F. 922; West Pub. Co. v. Edward Thompson Co., 176 F. 833. It is assumed that, in the absence of copyright, the data compiled could be freely used. See Morris v. Ashbee, L.R. 7 Eq. 34, 40. Compare also Chilton v. Progress Printing & Publishing Co., [1895] 2 Ch. 29.
13. "Trust Laws & Unfair Competition" (U.S. Bureau of Corporations, March 15, 1915) pp. 301-331, 332-461; Nims, Unfair Competition and Trademarks, c. XIX; Sperry & Hutchinson Co. v. Pommer, 199 F. 309, 314; Racine Paper Goods Co. v. Dittgen, 171 F. 631; Schonwald v. Ragains, 32 Okl. 223; Attorney General v. National Cash Register Co., 182 Mich. 99; Witkop & Holmes Co. v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 124 N.Y.S. 956, 958; Dunshee v. Standard Oil Co., 152 Iowa 618; Tuttle v. Buck, 107 Minn. 145.
The cases of Fonotipia Limited v. Bradley, 171 F. 951, and Prest-O-Lite Co. v. Davis, 209 F. 917, which were strongly relied upon by the plaintiff, contain expressions indicating rights possibly broad enough to sustain the injunction in the case at bar, but both cases involve elements of "passing off." See also Prest-O-Lite Co. v. Davis, 215 F. 349; Searchlight Gas Co. v. Prest-O-Lite Co., 215 F. 692; Prest-O-Lite Co. v. H. W. Bogen, 209 F. 915; Prest-O-Lite Co. v. Avery Lighting Co., 161 F. 648. In Prest-O-Lite Co. v. Auto Acetylene Light Co., 191 F. 90, the bill was dismissed on the ground that no deception was shown.
14. Magee Furnace Co. v. Le Barron, 127 Mass. 115; Ricker v. Railway, 90 Me. 395, 403.
15. According to the bylaws of the Associated Press, no one can be elected a member without the affirmative vote of at least four-fifths of all the members of the corporation or the vote of the directors. Furthermore, the power of the directors to admit anyone to membership may be limited by a right of protest to be conferred upon individual members. See By-Laws, Article III, § 6.
The members of this corporation may, by an affirmative vote of seven-eighths of all the members, confer upon a member (with such limitations as may be at the time prescribed) a right of protest against the admission of new members by the board of directors. The right of protest, within the limits specified at the time it is conferred, shall empower the member holding it to demand a vote of the members of the corporation on all applications for the admission of new members within the district for which it is conferred except as provided in § 2 of this Article.
16. Senate Bill No. 1728, 48th Congress, First Session. The bill provides:
That any daily or weekly newspaper, or any association of daily or weekly newspapers, published in the United States or any of the territories thereof, shall have the sole right to print, issue, and sell, for the term of eight hours, dating from the hour of going to press, the contents of said daily or weekly newspaper, or the collected news of said newspaper association, exceeding one hundred words.
Sec. 2. That, for any infringement of the copyright granted by the first section of this act, the party injured may sue in any court of competent jurisdiction and recover in any proper action the damages sustained by him from the person making such infringement, together with the costs of suit.
It was reported on April 18, 1884, by the Committee on the Library without amendment, and that it ought not to pass, Journal of the Senate. 48th Congress, First Session, p. 548. No further action was apparently taken on the bill.
When the copyright legislation of 1909, finally enacted as Act of March 4, 1909, c. 320, 35 Stat. 1075, was under consideration, there was apparently no attempt to include news among the subjects of copyright. Arguments before the Committees on Patents of the Senate and House of Representatives on Senate Bill No. 6330 and H.R. Bill No.19853, 59th Congress, First Session, June 6, 7, 8, and 9, and December 7, 8, 10, and 11, 1906; Hearings on Pending Bills to Amend and Consolidate Acts Respecting Copyright, March 26, 27 and 28, 1908.
17. 38 Stat. 1785, 1789, Article 11.
18. Bowker, Copyright: Its History and Its Law, pp. 330, 612, 613. See the similar provisions in the Berne Convention (1886) and the Paris Convention (1896). Id., pp. 612, 613.
In 1898, Lord Herschell introduced in Parliament a bill, § 11 of which provides:
Copyright in respect of a newspaper shall apply only to such parts of the newspaper as are compositions of an original literary character, to original illustrations therein,
and to such news and information as have been specially and independently obtained.
(Italics ours.) House of Lords, Sessional Papers, 1898, Vol. 3, Bill No. 21. Birrell, Copyright in Books, p. 210. But the bill was not enacted, and in the English law as it now stands there is no provision giving even a limited copyright in news as such. Act of December 16, 1911, 1 and 2 Geo. 5, c. 46.
19. Boston Diatite Co. v. Florence Mfg. Co., 114 Mass. 69; Prudential Assurance Co. v. Knott, L.R. 10 Ch.App. 142.
20. Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475. Compare Swafford v. Templeton, 185 U.S. 487; Green v. Mills, 69 F. 852, 859.
21. Revised Statutes, § 3224; Snyder v. Marks, 109 U.S. 189; Dodge v. Osborn, 240 U.S. 118.
22. Act of March 4, 1909, § 25, c. 320, 35 Stat. 1075, 1081, provides, as to the liability for the infringement of a copyright, that
in the case of a newspaper reproduction of a copyrighted photograph, such damages shall not exceed the sum of two hundred dollars nor be less than the sum of fifty dollars,
and that, in the case of infringement of a copyrighted newspaper, the damages recoverable shall be one dollar for every infringing copy, but shall not be less than $250 nor more than $5,000.