New York Times Company, Inc., et al. v. Jonathan Tasini, et al. (533 U.S. 483)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 25, 2001 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 533 U.S. 483 · 121 S. Ct. 2381
- Decided
- June 25, 2001
- Term
- October Term 2000
- Vote
- 7–2
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. This copyright case concerns the rights of freelance authors and a presumptive privilege of their publishers. The litigation was initiated by six freelance authors and relates to articles they contributed to three print periodicals (two newspapers and one magazine). Under agreements with the periodicals’ publishers, but without the freelancers’ consent, two computer database companies placed copies of the freelancers’ articles — along with all other articles from the periodicals in which the freelancers’ work appeared — into three databases. Whether written by a freelancer or staff member, each article is presented to, and retrievable by, the user in isolation, clear of the context the original print publication presented. The freelance authors’ complaint alleged that their copyrights had been infringed by the inclusion of their articles in the databases. The publishers, in response, relied on the privilege of reproduction and distribution accorded them by § 201(c) of the Copyright Act, which provides: “Copyright in each separate contribution to a collective work is distinct from copyright in the collective work as a whole, and vests initially in the author of the contribution. In the absence of an express transfer of the copyright or of any rights under it, the owner of copyright in the collective work is presumed to have…
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