JUDGES: Before ANDERSON, Chief Judge, RONEY, Senior Circuit Judge, and COOK, Senior District Judge. E RONEY, Senior Circuit Judge, dissenting. Julian Abele Cook, Jr., Senior District Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
ANDERSON, Chief Judge:
The Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. brought this copyright infringement action against CBS, Inc. after CBS produced a video documentary that used, without authorization, portions of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. The district court granted summary judgment to CBS on the ground that Dr. King had engaged in a general publication of the speech, placing it into the public domain. We now reverse.
FACTS
The facts underlying this case form part of our national heritage and are well-known to many Americans. On the afternoon of August 28, 1963, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ("SCLC") held the March on Washington ("March") to promote the growing civil rights movement. The events of the day were seen and heard by some 200,000 people gathered at the March, and were broadcast live via radio and television to a nationwide audience of millions of viewers. The highlight of the March was a rousing speech that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the SCLC's founder and president, gave in front of the Lincoln Memorial ("Speech"). The Speech contained the famous utterance, "I have a dream ...," which became symbolic of the civil rights movement. The SCLC had sought out wide press coverage of the March and the Speech, and these efforts were successful; the Speech was reported in daily newspapers across the country, was broadcast live on radio and television, and was extensively covered on television and radio subsequent to the live broadcast.
On September 30, 1963, approximately one month after the delivery of the Speech, Dr. King took steps to secure federal copyright protection for the Speech under the Copyright Act of 1909, and a certificate of registration of his claim to copyright was issued by the Copyright Office on October 2, 1963. Almost immediately thereafter, Dr. King filed suit in the Southern District of New York to enjoin the unauthorized sale of recordings of the Speech and won a preliminary injunction on December 13, 1963.
For the next twenty years, Dr. King and the Estate enjoyed copyright protection in the Speech and licensed it for a variety of uses, and renewed the copyright when necessary. In 1994, CBS entered into a contract with the Arts & Entertainment Network to produce a historical documentary series entitled "The 20th Century with Mike Wallace." One segment was devoted to "Martin Luther King, Jr. and The March on Washington." That episode contained material filmed by CBS during the March and extensive footage of the Speech (amounting to about 60% of its total content). CBS, however, did not seek the Estate's permission to use the Speech in this manner and refused to pay royalties to the Estate. The instant litigation ensued.
On summary judgment, the district court framed the issue as "whether the public delivery of Dr. King's speech ... constituted a general publication of the speech so as to place it in the public domain." After discussing the relevant case law, the district court held that Dr. King's "performance coupled with such wide and unlimited reproduction and dissemination as occurred concomitant to Dr. King's speech during the March on Washington can be seen only as a general publication which thrust the speech into the public domain." Thus, the district court granted CBS's motion for summary judgment. The Estate now appeals to this Court.
II. DISCUSSION
Because of the dates of the critical events, the determinative issues in this case are properly analyzed under the Copyright Act of 1909 ("1909 Act"), rather than the Copyright Act of 1976 ("1976 Act") that is currently in effect. ("The determination whether a work entered the public domain prior to the effective date of the 1976 Act must be made according to the copyright law as it existed before that date."). The question is whether Dr. King's attempt to obtain statutory copyright protection on September 30, 1963 was effective, or whether it was a nullity because the Speech had already been forfeited to the public domain via a general publication
Under the regime created by the 1909 Act, an author received state common law protection automatically at the time of creation of a work. This state common law protection persisted until the moment of a general publication. When a general publication occurred, the author either forfeited his work to the public domain, or, if he had therebefore complied with federal statutory requirements, converted his common law copyright into a federal statutory copyright.
In order to soften the hardship of the rule that publication destroys common law rights, courts developed a distinction between a "general publication" and a "limited publication." Only a general publication divested a common law copyright. A general publication occurred "when a work was made available to members of the public at large without regard to their identity or what they intended to do with the work." Conversely, a non-divesting limited publication was one that communicated the contents of a work to a select group and for a limited purpose, and without the right of diffusion, reproduction, distribution or sale. The issue before us is whether Dr. King's delivery of the Speech was a general publication.
Numerous cases stand for the proposition that the performance of a work is not a general publication. ("The public representation of a dramatic composition, not printed and published, does not deprive the owner of his common-law right.... The public performance of the play is not an abandonment of it to the public use."); ("The author of a literary composition, as a lecture, may profit from public delivery, but that does not constitute the kind of publication which deprives him of the protection of the copyright statute...."); ( "The copyright statute itself plainly shows that 'oral delivery' of an address is not a dedication to the public."); (rejecting infringer's argument that "the presentation of the song ... in vaudeville prior to the date of copyright was a complete dedication to the public," because "it is ... well settled that the public performance of a dramatic or musical composition is not an abandonment of the composition to the public"); Columbia Broad. Sys., Inc. v. Documentaries Unlimited, Inc., (holding with respect to news anchor's famous announcement of the death of President Kennedy that "the rendering of a performance before the microphone does not constitute an abandonment of ownership or a dedication of it to the public at large").
It appears from the case law that a general publication occurs only in two situations. First, a general publication occurs if tangible copies of the work are distributed to the general public in such a manner as allows the public to exercise dominion and control over the work. Second, a general publication may occur if the work is exhibited or displayed in such a manner as to permit unrestricted copying by the general public.
The case law indicates that distribution to the news media, as opposed to the general public, for the purpose of enabling the reporting of a contemporary newsworthy event, is only a limited publication. This rule comports with common sense; it does not force an author whose message happens to be newsworthy to choose between obtaining news coverage for his work and preserving his common-law copyright. As the dissenting judge in the Rickover case remarked (which remark was entirely consistent with the majority opinion in the case), "there is nothing in the law which would compel this court to deprive the creator of the right to reap financial benefits from these efforts because, at the time of their creation, they had the added virtue of being newsworthy events of immediate public concern."
With the above principles in mind, in the summary judgment posture of this case and on the current state of this record, we are unable to conclude that CBS has demonstrated beyond any genuine issue of material fact that Dr. King, simply through his oral delivery of the Speech, engaged in a general publication making the Speech "available to members of the public at large without regard to their identity or what they intended to do with the work." A performance, no matter how broad the audience, is not a publication; to hold otherwise would be to upset a long line of precedent. This conclusion is not altered by the fact that the Speech was broadcast live to a broad radio and television audience and was the subject of extensive contemporaneous news coverage.
Our conclusion finds significant support from Burke v. National Broadcasting Co., Inc., 598 F.2d 688 (1st Cir. 1979). Burke captured on film a highly unusual and dramatic encounter in which a zebra attacked a lioness who had killed the zebra's foal. Grzimek, a professor and a host of an educational television program, wrote Burke requesting permission to use the film in his lectures and in the educational television program. Burke responded affirmatively, sending Grzimek the film accompanied by a short reply that contained neither express authorization nor express restriction with respect to other possible uses of the film. Grzimek initially used the film only for the stated purposes, but later transmitted a copy of the film to a commercial company specializing in nature films, which in turn sold a production that included the film to NBC. The issue was whether Burke's common law copyright was forfeited to the public domain by virtue of the circumstances surrounding his seemingly unconditioned release of the film to Grzimek. In other words, the issue was whether there had been a general publication. The First Circuit held that only a limited publication had occurred, and that Burke's common law copyright had not been lost.
We believe that the authority granted to the press in the instant case--extensive news coverage including live broadcasts--is analogous to the authority granted in Burke. In Burke, authority was granted to the host of an educational television program to broadcast on television; in the instant case, authority was granted to the press for extensive news coverage, also including broadcasts on television. In both cases, the authority was granted to a limited group for a limited purpose. In both cases, the restrictions on copying and reproducing were implied. The soundness of our analogy to Burke is also supported by the foregoing case law indicating generally that distribution to the news media for the purpose of news coverage is only a limited publication.
Because there exist genuine issues of material fact as to whether a general publication occurred, we must reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment for CBS. It would be inappropriate for us to address CBS's other arguments, e.g., fair use and the First Amendment, because the district court did not address them, and because the relevant facts may not yet be fully developed. Of course, we express no opinion on the eventual merits of this litigation. The judgment of the district court is reversed and remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.