|
CITATION: 999 F.2d
1436
BELLSOUTH ADVERTISING & PUBLISHING
CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Counterclaim
Defendant-Appellee,
v.
DONNELLEY INFORMATION
PUBLISHING, INC. and The Reuben H. DONNELLEY
Corp., Defendants-Counterclaim
Plaintiffs-Appellants, BellSouth
Corporation, et al., Counterclaim
Defendants.
United States Court of
Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. Sept. 2,
1993.
Douglas C. Broeker, Fowler, White, Burnett,
Hurley, Banick & Strickroot, P.A., Miami, FL, David L.
Foster, Theodore Case Whitehouse, Francis J. Menton, Jr.,
Willkie, Farr & Gallagher, Baila H. Celedonia, Roger L.
Zissu, Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C., New York City, for
appellants. Robert Richards, Anthony B. Askew, Jones, Askew
& Lunsford, Atlanta, GA, for Bellsouth Advertising. John
K. Roedel, Jr., Senniger, Powers, Leavitt & Roedel, St.
Louis, MO, for amicus ANADP. Robert E. Marsh, Blackwell,
Sanders, Matheny, Weary & Lombardi, Kansas City, MO, for
amicus--US WEST. Robert Alan Garrett, Arnold & Porter,
Washington, DC, for amicus Bell Atlantic.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida.
Before TJOFLAT, Chief Judge, FAY, HATCHETT,
EDMONDSON, BIRCH, BLACK and CARNES, Circuit Judges (Honorable
Phyllis A. Kravitch, Honorable R. Lanier Anderson, III,
Honorable Emmett Ripley Cox and Honorable Joel F. Dubina did
not participate in this decision.)
BIRCH, Circuit Judge:
I. INTRODUCTION
In this appeal, we must decide whether
acts of copying infringed the compilation copyright registered
in a "yellow pages" classified business directory. The parties
have stipulated that the directory, which is a typical yellow
pages directory, qualifies for compilation copyright
protection. Thus, we are called upon to apply Feist
Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 111
S.Ct. 1282, 113 L.Ed.2d 358 (1991), which addressed copyright
protection for a "white pages" telephone directory, to resolve
the infringement claims presented to us concerning a directory
of a different color.
The pivotal issue in this case is
whether that which was copied by the alleged infringer was
protected by the registered claim of compilation copyright.
The parties agree that the only elements of a work entitled to
compilation copyright protection are the selection,
arrangement or coordination as they appear in the work as a
whole. The parties dispute what elements of a classified
directory constitute such selection, arrangement or
coordination. Mindful that the protection afforded to a whole
work by a compilation copyright is "thin," [FN1] the
determination as to whether an infringement of a compilation
copyright has occurred is particularly difficult where less
than the entire work is copied.
II. BACKGROUND
BellSouth Advertising & Publishing
Corporation ("BAPCO") is a wholly owned subsidiary of
BellSouth Corporation ("BellSouth") created for the purpose of
preparing, publishing and distributing telephone directories.
Using telephone listing information supplied by Southern Bell
Telephone and Telegraph Company ("Southern Bell"), another
wholly owned subsidiary of BellSouth, BAPCO publishes a
classified, "yellow pages," advertising directory for the
Greater Miami area. The BAPCO directory is organized into an
alphabetical list of business classifications. Each
business-rate telephone service subscriber is listed in
alphabetical order under one appropriate heading without
charge. A subscriber may purchase cross listings under
different business classifications or advertisements to appear
along with its business listing. After BAPCO published its
1984 directory for the Greater Miami area, Donnelley
Information Publishing, Inc. and Reuben H. Donnelley Corp.
(collectively "DONNELLEY") began promoting and selling
classified advertisements to be placed in a competitive
classified directory for the Greater Miami area. To generate a
list of business telephone subscribers to be solicited for
placement in its directory, DONNELLEY gave copies of BAPCO's
directory to Appalachian Computer Services, Inc. ("ACS"), a
data entry company. DONNELLEY first marked each listing in the
BAPCO directory with one alphanumeric code indicating the size
and type of advertisement purchased by the subscriber [FN2]
and a similar code indicating the type of business represented
by the BAPCO heading under which the listing appeared. For
each listing appearing in the BAPCO directory, ACS created a
computer data base containing the name, address, and telephone
number of the subscriber as well as the codes corresponding to
business type and unit of advertising. From this data base,
DONNELLEY printed sales lead sheets, listing this information
for each subscriber, to be used to contact business telephone
subscribers to sell advertisements and listings in the
DONNELLEY directory. Relying on this information copied from
the BAPCO directory, DONNELLEY ultimately prepared its own
competitive directory for the Greater Miami area.
BAPCO sued DONNELLEY for alleged
copyright infringement, [FN3] trademark infringement, and
unfair competition. After the district court denied BAPCO's
motion for a preliminary injunction, DONNELLEY answered and
counterclaimed against BAPCO, Southern Bell and BellSouth, for
alleged violations of federal antitrust law. On the copyright
infringement claim, the district court granted summary
judgment to BAPCO and denied DONNELLEY'S motion seeking
partial summary judgment in its favor, [FN4] BellSouth
Advertising & Publishing Corp. v. Donnelly Info.
Publishing, Inc., 719 F.Supp. 1551 (S.D.Fla.1988).
The district court found, and DONNELLEY
admitted, that BAPCO owned a valid compilation copyright in
its classified directory. DONNELLEY stipulated that, in
preparing its data base and sales lead sheets, it obtained
from each listing in the BAPCO directory, the telephone
number, name, address, kind of business, and unit of
advertising for the listed subscriber. As further evidence of
copying, the district court relied on affidavits and
deposition testimony from DONNELLEY'S representatives and the
presence of a number of erroneous listings common to the BAPCO
and DONNELLEY directories. From the process by which DONNELLEY
prepared its competitive yellow pages directory, the district
court identified three acts of copying: (1) the entry of
subscriber information into the computer data base by ACS; (2)
the printout of sales lead sheets from this data base; and (3)
the publication of DONNELLEY'S directory. Based on these acts
of copying, the court granted BAPCO's motion for summary
judgment on its copyright infringement claims. [FN5] DONNELLEY
appealed the district court's resolution of the parties'
motions on the copyright claim. [FN6] III.
DISCUSSION
A. FEIST Publications and the
Requirement of Originality. In FEIST Publications, the Supreme
Court clarified the scope of copyright protection afforded to
factual compilations. Rural Telephone Service Company
("Rural") claimed that FEIST Publications, Inc. ("FEIST")
infringed Rural's copyright by using names and telephone
number listings from Rural's white pages directory to compile
its own white pages directory. Observing the inherent tension
between the axiom of copyright law that facts are not
copyrightable [FN7] and the principle that compilations of
fact generally are copyrightable, the Court identified those
components of a factual compilation that may receive copyright
protection under certain circumstances. 499 U.S. at ----, 111
S.Ct. at 1287.
The Court stressed that "[t]he sine qua
non of copyright is originality." 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct.
at 1287. [FN8] "Facts, whether alone or as a part of a
compilation, are not original and therefore may not be
copyrighted." 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1290. Drawing
upon the requirement of originality and the definition of
"compilation" in the Copyright Act, [FN9] the Court held that
a compiler's selection, arrangement and coordination, if
original, are the only protectable elements of a factual
compilation. 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1289. [FN10]
Applying the requirement of originality
to the directory compiled by Rural, the Court noted that the
listings, consisting of subscribers' names, towns of
residence, and telephone numbers, were uncopyrightable facts.
Further, the selection, coordination, and arrangement of
Rural's white pages were not sufficiently original to merit
copyright protection. "Rural's selection of listings could not
be more obvious: it publishes the most basic
information--name, town, and telephone number--about each
person who applies to it for telephone service." 499 U.S. at
----, 111 S.Ct. at 1296. Rural failed to establish any
original elements of coordination or arrangement: "there is
nothing remotely creative about arranging names alphabetically
in a white pages directory. It is an age-old practice, firmly
rooted in tradition and so commonplace that it has come to be
expected as a matter of course." 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct.
at 1297. In short, "Rural expended sufficient effort to make
the white pages directory useful, but insufficient creativity
to make it original." 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at
1296.
B. BAPCO's Claim of
Infringement
To establish its claim of copyright
infringement, BAPCO must prove: "(1) ownership of a valid
copyright, and (2) copying of constituent elements of the work
that are original." 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1296. The
validity of BAPCO's copyright in its directory, considered as
a whole, was conceded by DONNELLEY. [FN11] To demonstrate the
second element of infringement, BAPCO must prove that
DONNELLEY, by taking the material it copied from the BAPCO
directory, appropriated BAPCO's original selection,
coordination or arrangement.
The district court found that BAPCO
engaged in a number of acts of selection in compiling its
listings. For example, BAPCO determined the geographic scope
of its directory and the closing date after which no changes
in listings would be included. BellSouth, 719 F.Supp. at
1557-58. The district court erred, however, in implicitly
determining that these selective acts were sufficiently
original to merit copyright protection. Rural obviously
established a geographic scope and a closing date for its
white pages, which were held uncopyrightable as a matter of
law in FEIST. The district court's analysis would protect such
factual elements of every compilation; any collection of facts
"fixed in any tangible medium of expression" [FN12] will by
necessity have a closing date and, where applicable, a
geographic limit selected by the compiler. The district court
found that BAPCO "selected" its listings by requiring its
yellow pages subscribers to use a business telephone service.
Id. at 1557. The district court also focused on a number of
marketing techniques employed by BAPCO to generate its
listings, such as the determination of the number of free
listings offered to each subscriber, the selection of which
customers to contact by an on-premise visit from sales
personnel, the selection of the date of commencement of its
advertisement sales campaign, and the procedure used to
recommend the purchase of listings under multiple headings.
Id. at 1557. The district court again failed to consider
whether these "acts of selection" met the level of originality
required to extend the protection of copyright to BAPCO's
selection.
More fundamental, these acts are not
acts of authorship, but techniques for the discovery of facts.
In FEIST, the Court emphasized the distinction "between
creation and discovery: the first person to find and report a
particular fact has not created the fact; he or she has merely
discovered its existence." 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at
1288. By employing its sales strategies, BAPCO discovered that
certain subscribers describe their businesses in a particular
fashion and were willing to pay for a certain number of
listings under certain available business descriptions. To be
sure, BAPCO employed a set of strategies or techniques for
discovering this data. Any useful collection of facts,
however, will be structured by a number of decisions regarding
the optimal manner in which to collect the pertinent data in
the most efficient and accurate manner. If this were
sufficient, then the protection of copyright would extend to
census data, cited in FEIST as a paradigmatic example of a
work that lacks the requisite originality. 499 U.S. at ----,
111 S.Ct. at 1288. Just as the Copyright Act does not protect
"industrious collection," it affords no shelter to the
resourceful, efficient, or creative collector. See Miller v.
Universal City Studios, Inc., 650 F.2d 1365, 1372 (5th Cir.
July 1981) ("The valuable distinction in copyright law between
facts and the expression of facts cannot be maintained if
research is held to be copyrightable."). The protection of
copyright must inhere in a creatively original selection of
facts to be reported and not in the creative means used to
discover those facts. See 17 U.S.C. s 102(b) ("In no case does
copyright protection ... extend to any idea, procedure,
process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or
discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described,
explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.").
Ultimately, the district court erred by extending copyright
protection to the collection of facts in the BAPCO directory
based on the uncopyrightable formative acts used to generate
those listings.
In addition to these acts of selection,
the district court found that BAPCO engaged in feats of
coordination and arrangement to generate its yellow pages
directory. The court explains that BAPCO arranged its
directory in an alphabetized list of business types, with
individual businesses listed in alphabetical order under the
applicable headings. The Copyright Act protects "original
works of authorship." 17 U.S.C. s 102(a). BAPCO's arrangement
and coordination is "entirely typical" for a business
directory. FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1296. [FN13]
With respect to business telephone directories, such an
arrangement "is not only unoriginal, it is practically
inevitable." 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1297. BAPCO's
claim of copyright in the arrangement of its directory also
does not survive application of the "merger" doctrine. Under
the merger doctrine, "expression is not protected in those
instances where there is only one or so few ways of expressing
an idea that protection of the expression would effectively
accord protection to the idea itself." Kregos v. Associated
Press, 937 F.2d 700, 705 (2d Cir.1991); [FN14] see also Baker
v. Selden, 101 U.S. (11 Otto) 99, 25 L.Ed. 841 (1879). Because
this is the one way to construct a useful business directory,
the arrangement has "merged" with the idea of a business
directory, and thus is uncopyrightable. [FN15]
The district court's suggestion that
BAPCO could have arranged its headings according to the number
of advertisers or to list its subscribers under each heading
according to the length of time for which that subscriber had
appeared under that heading misapprehends the question. The
relevant inquiry is not whether there is some imaginable,
although manifestly less useful, method of arranging business
telephone listings. In FEIST, Rural could have published
multiple directories for its service area or listed its
numbers in numerical order, by age, or by neighborhood within
a single directory. The pertinent inquiry is whether the
compiler has demonstrated originality, the "sine qua non" of
copyright, in its arrangement or coordination. The arrangement
of BAPCO's yellow pages, like that of Rural's white pages is
"entirely typical" of its respective type.
The district court also identified acts
of coordination and arrangement in the particular system of
headings used in the BAPCO directory. The district court
appears to find that, when DONNELLEY entered the listing
information from the BAPCO directory, it also copied the
particular heading under which that listing appeared in the
BAPCO directory. 719 F.Supp. at 1558-59. [FN16] BAPCO,
however, failed to introduce evidence sufficient to establish
a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether DONNELLEY
copied the particular heading structure employed by BAPCO.
DONNELLEY stipulated that it obtained the "business type" for
each listing from the BAPCO directory. R1-8. The evidence
submitted to the district court in the form of affidavit,
deposition, and witness testimony reveals that DONNELLEY
established its own system of headings and that, in
constructing its data base, DONNELLEY entered an alphanumeric
code that corresponded to the DONNELLEY heading with each
BAPCO listing. 5SR2, at 183-85; 1SR-434, at 76-77, 143-44;
1SR-435, at 253- 54 and Ex. 278; Deposition of John Notestein,
at 10, 12, 14-15, 22. Further, the sales lead sheets generated
by DONNELLEY from its database, as well as pages of the
respective directories submitted to the district court,
illustrate that DONNELLEY selected a somewhat different
category of headings to describe the listings originally
appearing in the BAPCO directory. [FN17] Considering the
extent to which the heading structure of a classified business
directory is dictated by functional considerations and common
industry practice, the differences apparent in the glossary of
headings employed by DONNELLEY are sufficient to rebut any
inference of copying that otherwise might be drawn from those
terms that are common to both directories. [FN18] In sum, the
evidence before the district court requires the conclusion
that, by determining the type of business of each subscriber
by observation of the BAPCO directory and translating that
business type into an encoded heading of its own creation,
DONNELLEY extracted uncopyrightable information regarding the
business activities of BAPCO's subscribers without
appropriating any arguably original, protectable expressive
element in the BAPCO glossary of headings.
Additionally, BAPCO failed to present
evidence that, even if copied, its heading structure
constitutes original expression warranting copyright
protection. Initially, many of the selected headings, for
example "Attorneys" or "Banks," represent such an obvious
label for the entities appearing under these headings as to
lack the requisite originality for copyright protection.
[FN19] BAPCO can claim no copyright in the idea of dividing
churches by denomination or attorneys by area of specialty.
Further, any expressive act in including a category such as
"Banks" or in dividing "Attorneys" into categories such as
"Bankruptcy" or "Criminal Law" would lose copyright protection
because it would merge with the idea of listing such entities
as a class of businesses in a business directory. [FN20] The
evidence submitted by DONNELLEY also establishes that many of
BAPCO's headings result from certain standard industry
practices, such as the recommendations of the National Yellow
Pages Sales Association, with regard to the selection and
phrasing of headings in business directories. Finally, as
established by the testimony of BAPCO's representatives, the
ultimate appearance of a particular subscriber under a certain
heading is determined by the subscriber's willingness to
purchase those listings in the BAPCO directory. While BAPCO
may select the headings that are offered to the subscriber, it
is the subscriber who selects from those alternatives the
headings under which the subscriber will appear in the
copyrighted directory. The headings that actually appear in
the directory thus, do not owe their origin to BAPCO and BAPCO
has claimed no copyright in the larger universe of headings
that are offered to subscribers. Thus, the elements of
selection, coordination and arrangement identified by the
district court, and purportedly copied by DONNELLEY, as a
matter of law, do not display the originality required to
merit copyright protection.
Although purporting to consider whether
DONNELLEY copied the original elements of selection,
arrangement or coordination from the BAPCO directory, the
opinion of the district court rests, at least in part, on a
comparison of the appearance of corresponding pages from both
directories. [FN21] For example, the court concluded that
"DONNELLEY used a format nearly identical to that used by
BAPCO" and that "although DONNELLEY'S directory is not
identical to BAPCO's directory, the material was copied and
used to produce a directory substantially similar in both
content and format." 719 F.Supp. at 1559. The district court
erred, however, by failing to consider the degree to which the
similarity between the two directories was because of
DONNELLEY'S use of the uncopyrightable facts, such as name,
number, address, and business type, from the BAPCO directory.
Further, to the extent that this similarity of format resulted
from was due to the common arrangement and coordination of the
two directories into alphabetized business classifications,
with alphabetized listings under each classification, the
district court erred by extending the scope of BAPCO's
copyright to capture the system of organization common to all
classified directories in the public domain. Moreover, the
other elements of format common to the two directories, such
as the organization of listings into four columns, are also
manifestly typical, obvious and unoriginal.
By comparing the overall appearance of
the two directories through its comparison of the
corresponding pages, the district court effectively failed to
consider whether DONNELLEY copied the "constituent elements of
the work that are original." FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111
S.Ct. at 1296. In the case of a factual compilation, a
comparison of the copyright holder's work with that of the
alleged infringer must distinguish similarities attributable
to ideas, which are unprotected per se, or to expression not
owned by the copyright holder, from those similarities
resulting from the copying of the compiler's original
elements. [FN22] We consider this conclusion to be compelled
by section 103(b) of the Copyright Act, which directs that
"[t]he copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends
only to the material contributed by the author of such work,
as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the
work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the
preexisting material." 17 U.S.C. s 103(b).
We note that DONNELLEY did not copy,
nor was alleged to have copied, the text or graphic material
from the advertisements in the BAPCO directory, the
positioning of these advertisements, the typeface, or the
textual material included by BAPCO to assist the user. Unlike
the infringer in Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co. v.
Associated Tel. Directory Publishers, 756 F.2d 801 (11th
Cir.1985), DONNELLEY did not photocopy, or reproduce by any
equivalent means, the page by page arrangement or appearance
of its competitor's directory in the process of creating its
own work. Although the amount of material taken from the BAPCO
directory was substantial in a purely quantitative sense,
DONNELLEY did not, by this process, appropriate whatever
original elements might arguably inhere in the BAPCO
directory. Given that the copyright protection of a factual
compilation is "thin," a competitor's taking the bulk of the
factual material from a preexisting compilation without
infringement of the author's copyright is not surprising.
FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1289. While it may seem
unfair for a compiler's labor to be used by a competitor
without compensation, the Court noted in FEIST that "[t]he
primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of
authors, but '[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful
Arts.' " 499 U.S. 1446 at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1290 (quoting
U.S. Const. art. I, s 8, cl. 8). "To this end, copyright
assures authors the right to their original expression, but
encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and
information conveyed by a work." Id. (emphasis added); see
also Harper & Row, Publishers v. Nation Enterprises, 471
U.S. 539, 545-46, 105 S.Ct. 2218, 2223, 85 L.Ed.2d 588
(1985).
IV. CONCLUSION
By copying the name, address, telephone
number, business type, and unit of advertisement purchased for
each listing in the BAPCO directory, [FN23] DONNELLEY copied
no original element of selection, coordination or arrangement;
DONNELLEY thus was entitled to summary judgment on BAPCO's
claim of copyright infringement. [FN24] We REVERSE the
judgment of the district court granting summary judgment to
BAPCO on its claim of copyright infringement and enter
judgment in favor of DONNELLEY on this claim.
APPENDIX IS OMMITED
MAJORITY OPINION FOOTNOTES
FN1. Feist, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct.
at 1289.
FN2. The code corresponding to the type
of advertising appearing in the BAPCO directory indicated only
the unit of advertising purchased. DONNELLEY did not record,
nor was alleged to have recorded, information regarding the
graphic appearance or page location of the advertising
material, nor did it copy facts concerning individual
businesses, such as product lines, services, hours of
operation, contained in the advertisements
themselves.
FN3. BAPCO registered its claim of
copyright (attached to this opinion as Appendix A) for the
"entire text and compilation" of both volumes of its 1984
Miami yellow pages directory. R1-1-Ex. D. It was upon this
registration that BAPCO initiated its action for infringement.
See 17 U.S.C. s 411(a) ("[N]o action for infringement of the
copyright in any work shall be instituted until registration
of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this
title.").
FN4. The district court granted BAPCO's
motion for summary judgment on DONNELLEY'S antitrust
counterclaim, but denied BellSouth and Southern Bell's motion
for summary judgment on the antitrust counterclaim. The only
issue presented by this appeal is the district court's
resolution of the copyright infringement claims.
FN5. In granting summary judgment in
favor of BAPCO, the district court rejected DONNELLEY'S fair
use and antitrust, or misuse of copyright, affirmative
defenses as a matter of law. Because we hold that summary
judgment should have been granted in favor of DONNELLEY on
BAPCO's copyright claim, we do not reach the issue of whether
DONNELLEY'S defenses were properly rejected on summary
judgment.
FN6. The judgment of the district court
was affirmed by a panel of this court, but was subsequently
vacated by a grant of rehearing en banc. Bellsouth Adv. &
Pub. Corp. v. DONNELLEY Info. Pub., Inc., 933 F.2d 952 (11th
Cir.1991), vacated and reh'g en banc granted, 977 F.2d 1435
(11th Cir.1992).
FN7. See 17 U.S.C. s 102(b).
FN8. Moreover, "[o]riginality is a
constitutional requirement" for copyright protection implicit
in the grant of power to Congress to "secur[e] for limited
Times to Authors ... the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings." FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1288 (quoting
U.S. Const. art. I, s 8, cl. 8).
FN9. Section 101 of the Copyright Act
of 1976 defines a compilation as "a work formed by the
collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data
that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that
the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of
authorship." 17 U.S.C. s 101.
FN10. In confirming originality as the
focus of copyright protection, the Court rejected an
alternative theory to justify the protection of factual
compilations. Relying upon a doctrine known alternatively as
"sweat of the brow" or "industrious collection," some courts
had extended copyright protection to every element of a
factual compilation based on the labor expended by the author
in compiling the constituent facts. By extending copyright
protection in a compilation beyond the author's original
selection, arrangement, and coordination, this line of cases
"eschewed the most fundamental axiom of copyright law--that no
one may copyright facts or ideas." 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct.
at 1291.
FN11. Because of the parties'
concession, we do not consider whether BAPCO's yellow pages
directory, taken as a whole, is copyrightable.
FN12. 17 U.S.C. s 102(a).
FN13. While the listings in BAPCO's
yellow pages required somewhat more organization and
arrangement than the white pages directory considered in
FEIST, BAPCO's claim of "originality" must be resolved by
comparison to other business telephone directories. BAPCO did
not deviate from the arrangement of the typical business
directory, which employs an alphabetical list of headings to
describe the various types of business and then alphabetizes
the listings under the appropriate headings Applying FEIST,
the Second Circuit declined to extend copyright protection to
the selection and arrangement of certain charts displaying the
results of horse racing. Victor Lalli Enters. v. Big Red
Apple,Inc., 936 F.2d 671, 673-74 (2d Cir.1991). "The format of
the charts is a convention: Lalli exercises neither
selectivity in what he reports nor creativity in how he
reports it." Id. at 673. Similarly, the Ninth Circuit rejected
a claim that two automobile catalogs listing replacement
radiators and associated parts were substantially similar.
Cooling Sys. & Flexibles, Inc. v. Stuart Radiator, 777
F.2d 485, 491 (9th Cir.1985). Although both works were
arranged into three sections (an illustrations section, an
original equipment manufacturer section, and an applications
section), the court found that this arrangement was obligatory
for a useful radiator parts catalog. "[T]he fewer the methods
of expressing an idea, the more the allegedly infringing work
must resemble the copyrighted work in order to establish
substantial similarity." Id. A subsequent collector is not
required to arrange its compilation in a fashion not usable by
those for whom it is intended. Id. at 492. The format of a
typical business telephone directory is even more obvious and
well established than the radiator catalogs at issue in
Cooling Systems.
FN14. See Kern River Gas Transmission
Co. v. Coastal Corp., 899 F.2d 1458, 1463-64 (5th Cir.)
(applying merger doctrine where idea of locating pipeline
along certain route was inseparable from expression of the
route on a topographical map), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 952, 111
S.Ct. 374, 112, L.Ed.2d 336 (1990); see also Educational
Testing Services v. Katzman, 793 F.2d 533, 539 (3d Cir.1986);
Toro Co. v. R & R Products Co., 787 F.2d 1208, 1212 (8th
Cir.1986).
FN15. In Matthew Bender & Co. v.
Kluwer Law Book Publishers, Inc., 672 F.Supp. 107
(S.D.N.Y.1987), the court considered the application of the
merger doctrine to a claim of copyright in a system of charts
displaying information regarding the amount of recovery in
previous personal injury cases. Both the plaintiff's work and
that of the alleged infringer divided the cases into chapters
corresponding to the part of the body injured and further
divided the cases within each chapter based on whether the
recovery was a result of a settlement, or an "adequate,"
"inadequate," or "excessive" award. 672 F.Supp. at 108. Each
work listed the cases according to forum state, arranging
awards from the same state from largest to smallest amount. In
both collections, information regarding each case was
organized into categories for amount, case name, plaintiff,
event, injury, and further relevant data. The court rejected
the plaintiff's claim of copyright, concluding that the
plaintiff's work employed one of the few practical and useful
means of organizing data regarding personal injury awards. The
idea and the expression of such a work thus "merged." Id. at
109-10. Further, the information selected for display about
each case was obvious and did not demonstrate the original
selection, arrangement or coordination required for copyright
protection. Id. at 112; see also Coates-Freeman Assocs., Inc.
v. Polaroid Corp., 792 F.Supp. 879, 883-84 (D.Mass.1992)
(Placement of decisionmaking steps on chart purporting to
categorize leadership styles was not a copyrightable feature
where selection of those particular steps out of a universe of
very limited options resulted in merger of any creativity into
the basic idea of the chart).
FN16. Significantly, BAPCO registered
no claim of copyright in the glossary of terms used to
describe the types of businesses represented by its listings.
BAPCO claims that DONNELLEY infringed its putative copyright
in its directory (the only claim of copyright before the
court) by somehow copying the directory onto the sales lead
sheets (Appendix B). This argument exemplifies the fundamental
misconception of the nature and scope of a compilation
copyright. A comparison of the DONNELLEY sales lead sheets and
the BAPCO directory pages (Appendix C) manifests no
substantial similarity as to those copyrightable elements of a
compilation. The dissent continues to confuse and merge the
copying of uncopyrightable data with the replication of the
copyrightable elements of a compilation.
FN17. Despite the dissent's belief to
the contrary, our opinion is based on the evidence that was
before the district court, including a number of sales lead
sheets (Appendix B) and pages from both directories (Appendix
C).
FN18. Where the form of expression is
largely prescribed by functional constraints, the similarity
of expression in a subsequent work must be very close in order
to establish infringement. "Factual works are different [from
works of fiction]. Subsequent authors wishing to express the
ideas contained in a factual work often can choose from only a
narrow range of expression.... Therefore, similarity of
expression may have to amount to verbatim reproduction or very
close paraphrasing before a factual work will be deemed
infringed." Landsberg v. Scrabble Crossword Game Players,Inc.,
736 F.2d 485, 488 (9th Cir.1984).
FN19. See Sem-Torq, Inc. v. K Mart
Corp., 936 F.2d 851, 854-55 (6th Cir.1991) (Copyright law does
not protect "forms of expression dictated solely by functional
considerations.").
FN20. See Matthew Bender, 672 F.Supp.
at 111 (Under merger doctrine, plaintiff could claim no
copyright protection in headings used to display data
regarding personal injury awards where "terms employed are the
most logical and clear way of expressing the idea to be
conveyed.... [and] these terms, or synonyms for them, are the
only way of conveying the desired information.").
FN21. A comparison of corresponding
pages from the two directories, which were before the district
court as set out in Appendix C, reveals several obvious
differences in typeface and graphic layout. DONNELLEY included
different advertisements, not only in content, but also in
number and design. BAPCO underlines its headings while
DONNELLEY marks its headings with a sideways triangle.
DONNELLEY uses a different type face. Whatever original
authorship is represented by these types of presentation
choices was clearly not copied by DONNELLEY. Further, the
sales lead sheets (attached in Appendix B) produced from the
ACS data base are obviously not similar in appearance or
arrangement to BAPCO's directory, in which its claim of
copyright was registered.
FN22. The Second Circuit has observed:
"Although the test for infringement of original works and
compilations is one of "substantial similarity," the
appropriate inquiry is narrowed in the case of a compilation.
As noted, the components of a compilation are generally in the
public domain, and a finding of substantial similarity or even
absolute identity as to matters in the public domain will not
suffice to prove infringement. What must be shown is
substantial similarity between those elements, and only those
elements, that provide copyrightability to the allegedly
infringed compilation. Key Publications, Inc. v. Chinatown
Today Publishing Enters., Inc., 945 F.2d 509, 514 (2d
Cir.1991) (citations omitted); see also Cooling Sys., 777 F.2d
at 492-93 ("What is important is not whether there is
substantial similarity in the total concept and feel of the
works, but whether the very small amount of protectable
expression in Cooling Systems' catalog is substantially
similar to the equivalent portions of Stuart's catalog.")
(citation omitted).
FN23. The common errors in the BAPCO
and DONNELLEY listings prove only that DONNELLEY admittedly
copied the name, number, address, and type of business from
every BAPCO listing. The presence of common errors is not
probative of whether the portions of the BAPCO directory
copied by DONNELLEY included the copyrightable elements of
original selection, coordination and arrangement. In FEIST,
the alleged infringer copied every listing from the compilers'
white pages, including four erroneous listings. 499 U.S. at
----, 111 S.Ct. at 1287. Because Rural copied only
uncopyrightable facts, however, the presence of common errors
was not relevant. See also Shira Perlmutter, "The Scope of
Copyright in Telephone Directories: Keeping Listing
Information in the Public Domain," 38 J.Copyright Society 1,
5-6 (Fall 1990) ("Where, as in FEIST, the defendant has
admitted copying, such evidence is simply irrelevant. Copying
of erroneous or fictitious entries has no bearing on the
question of whether material admittedly copied is protected by
the plaintiff's copyright, and if so, whether the taking is
substantial."); Alan Latman, "Probative Similarity as Proof of
Copying: Toward Dispelling Some Myths in Copyright
Infringement," 90 Columbia L.Rev. 1187, 1204-06 (1990)
(distinguishing use of common errors as proof of copying from
use as proof of substantial similarity of protected
material).
FN24. Summary judgment in favor of the
defendant in an infringement action is appropriate where the
similarity between the two works concerns only uncopyrightable
elements of the plaintiff's work. Arica Inst., Inc. v. Palmer,
970 F.2d 1067, 1072 (2d Cir.1992); Warner Bros., Inc. v.
American Broadcasting Cos., 720 F.2d 231, 240 (2d Cir.1983).
DISSENT
HATCHETT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority's holding establishes a
rule of law that transforms the multi-billion dollar
classified publishing industry from a business requiring the
production of a useful directory based on multiple layers of
creative decision-making, into a business requiring no more
than a successful race to a data processing agency to copy
another publisher's copyrighted work-product. In reaching this
incredible result, the majority forsakes thoughtful analysis
of the evidence under the governing principles articulated in
FEIST, and leaps to a conclusion based on nothing more than
its collective judgment of what ought to be
copyrightable.
Not only does the majority ignore the
evidence presented in the district court, but it also allows
the appellant to obtain an outright reversal of the district
court with new arguments and supplemental evidence that the
district court never considered. In doing so, the majority
transforms this en banc appellate court into no more than a
multiple judge trial court that allows unsuccessful litigants
to have the proverbial 'second bite at the apple.' I cannot
join the majority in its disregard for the well-established
parameters of appellate review; thus, I respectfully dissent.
[FN1]
DISCUSSION
In order to prevail on a claim of
copyright infringement, a plaintiff must prove two elements:
(1) that the plaintiff owns a valid copyright in the work; and
(2) that the defendant copied "constituent elements of the
work that are original." FEIST Publications, Inc. v. Rural
Telephone Service Co.,Inc., 499 U.S. 340, ----, 111 S.Ct.
1282, 1296, 113 L.Ed.2d 358, 379 (1991). DONNELLEY Information
Publishing, Inc. and Reuben H. DONNELLEY Corporation
(collectively "DONNELLEY") concedes that Bellsouth Advertising
& Publishing Corporation ("BAPCO") possesses a valid
compilation copyright in the 1984 Greater Miami Yellow Pages
(1984 Yellow Pages ), taken as a whole. DONNELLEY also
stipulated that it copied the following information from the
1984 Yellow Pages in preparing its "sales lead" sheets: "1.
telephone number--under the first column; 2. name--under the
second column; 3. address--under the third column; 4. kind of
business--under the fourth column; and 5. unit of
advertising--under the fifth column." Therefore, based on
DONNELLEY'S concessions that BAPCO possesses a valid copyright
and its stipulation to copying information from the 1984
Yellow Pages, this court is only asked to determine whether
DONNELLEY substantially copied constituent elements of the
1984 Yellow Pages that are original.
I. Copyrightability of
Compilations
It is settled that compilations of
facts are copyrightable, even though the facts themselves are
not subject to copyright protection. FEIST Publications, 499
U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1287, 113 L.Ed.2d at 368
(discussing the inherent tension between these
well-established propositions). The Copyright Act of 1976
defines a copyrightable compilation as "a work formed by the
collection and assembly of preexisting materials or of data
that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that
the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of
authorship." 17 U.S.C. s 101 (1988). Therefore, section 101
identifies three requirements for a compilation to qualify for
copyright protection: "(1) the collection and assembly of
preexisting material, facts, or data; (2) the selection,
coordination, or arrangement of those materials; and (3) the
creation, by virtue of the particular selection, coordination,
or arrangement, of an 'original' work of authorship." FEIST,
499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1293, 113 L.Ed.2d at
376.
The Court in FEIST noted that the
"selection, coordination, or arrangement" requirement is the
key to determining whether a work qualifies as a copyrightable
compilation. See FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1294,
113 L.Ed.2d at 377 (explaining that "facts are never original,
so the compilation author can claim originality, if at all,
only in the way that the facts are presented"). The Court in
FEIST emphasized that "the originality requirement is not
particularly stringent." See FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111
S.Ct. at 1294, 113 L.Ed.2d at 377 (explaining that originality
means only that a compiler selects or arranges independently
and displays some minimal level of creativity, even if the
compiler settles upon a selection or arrangement that others
have used). In addition, the Court in FEIST noted that a
copyrightable compilation is protected only to the extent of
the author's "original" selection, coordination, or
arrangement. See FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1295,
113 L.Ed.2d at 378. Accordingly, this court must first
determine what particular elements of BAPCO's selection,
coordination, and arrangement of preexisting facts in the 1984
Yellow Pages are sufficiently original to merit copyright
protection.
II. Original Selection, Coordination,
or Arrangement
Based on the undisputed facts, the
district court concluded that BAPCO performed the following
acts of selection, coordination, or arrangement, which were
sufficiently original to merit copyright protection: (1) the
selection of the geographic scope of businesses to be covered
in the directory; (2) the selection of the number of free
listings for businesses in the covered area; (3) the selection
of only businesses with business telephone service for
advertisements in the directory; (4) the selection of a menu
of classified headings that would be available for business
listings; (5) the selection of the criteria for determining
whether a business may advertise under a particular classified
heading; (6) the selection of the classified headings that
would be recommended to a particular business customer; (7)
the selection of customers who would receive on-premise sales
contact, telephone sales contact, or no contact; (8) the
selection of the dates for the beginning and closing of the
sales campaign for advertisements in the directory; and (9)
the arrangement of all of the business listings under a
particular heading, in alphabetical order. See BellSouth
Advertising & Publishing Corp. v. DONNELLEY Information
Publishing, Inc., 719 F.Supp. 1551, 1557-58
(S.D.Fla.1988).
The panel agreed that the 1984 Yellow
Pages constituted a copyrightable compilation, identifying the
following acts of selection, coordination, or arrangement as
sufficiently original: (1) selection of the geographic scope
of businesses to be included in the directory; (2) selection
of a directory close date as a limit on modifications that
would be reflected in a pending directory publication; (3) the
creation or selection of numerous classified headings that
would be available for business listings; (4) the coordination
of all the informational components--name, address, and
telephone number--of a particular business into one complete
business listing; and (5) the arrangement of all coordinated
business listings under the appropriate classified headings.
See: Bellsouth Advertising & Publishing Corp. v. DONNELLEY
Information Publishing, Inc., 933 F.2d 952, 957-58 (11th
Cir.1991), vacated and reh'g en banc granted, 977 F.2d 1435
(11th Cir.1992).
DONNELLEY challenges the district
court's and panel's holding that BAPCO performed sufficiently
original acts of selection, coordination, or arrangement to
merit copyright protection for the 1984 Yellow Pages.
DONNELLEY argues that the district court erred in identifying
BAPCO's alphabetizing of the listings and classified headings
as contributing to the originality of the directory. DONNELLEY
also argues that the district court erred in characterizing
BAPCO's decisions to offer one free listing, to include only
business telephone service subscribers, and decisions on
soliciting advertisements as acts of selection "fixed" in the
1984 Yellow Pages, as opposed to invisible business decisions.
In addition, DONNELLEY argues that the panel erred in
identifying BAPCO's coordination of the informational
components--name, address, and telephone number--of a
particular business as an original act of coordination.
Moreover, DONNELLEY argues that both the district court and
the panel erred in identifying BAPCO's selection of a
geographic scope, selection of classified headings, and
arrangement of all business listings under a particular
classified heading as "original" acts of selection or
arrangement. BAPCO responds that the district court and panel
correctly concluded that BAPCO's acts of selection,
coordination, or arrangement were sufficiently original to be
copyrightable. BAPCO analogizes the so-called "business
decisions" with the techniques that a photographer uses in
taking a picture. As the techniques of the photographer affect
the photograph, BAPCO argues that the published 1984 Yellow
Pages would have been completely different if BAPCO had
selected a different geographic scope, permitted residential
telephone service subscribers to be listed, chosen a different
closing date, elected not to provide a free listing, changed
its available menu of classified headings, engaged in
different marketing efforts to sell business listings,
excluded businesses listings from nearby communities such as
Fort Lauderdale, excluded listings of national businesses, or
permitted different arrangements between the available
classified headings and business listings. DONNELLEY is
correct to assert that the holding in FEIST precludes this
court from concluding that BAPCO satisfied the originality
requirement based on the mere alphabetizing of business
listings and classified headings, or based on the mere
coordination of the name, address, and telephone number of a
particular business into one complete business listing. See
FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1297, 113 L.Ed.2d at
380-81 (holding that a telephone company's white pages lack
the requisite originality for copyright protection where the
telephone company merely published basic subscriber
information--name, town, and telephone number--and arranged it
alphabetically based on surnames).
DONNELLEY is also correct to assert
that the district court erred in characterizing BAPCO's
decision to offer one free listing and decisions on the dates
and procedures for soliciting advertisements as original acts
of "selection." "Selection implies the exercise of judgment in
choosing which facts from a given body of data to include in a
compilation." Key Publications v. Chinatown Today Publishing
Enterprises, Inc., 945 F.2d 509, 513 (2d Cir.1991) (citations
omitted). BAPCO's decisions regarding a free listing and
solicitation procedures did not entail the exercise of
judgment in choosing among facts to be included in its
directories. "Selection" is not an appropriate term to
describe the choices to include all of the data in a given
body of data, on a given date. Instead of acts of selection,
these BAPCO's decisions are more closely analogous to ideas or
procedures for reliably and profitably collecting facts. As
ideas or procedures, BAPCO's decision to offer a free listing
and its decisions regarding soliciting advertisements, are not
copyrightable. See 17 U.S.C. s 102(b) (providing that no
copyright protection for an original work of authorship
extends to any "idea, procedure, process, system, method of
operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the
form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or
embodied in such work").
However, even ignoring these
erroneously identified acts of selection, coordination, or
arrangement, BAPCO's other acts of selection and arrangement
in compiling the 1984 Yellow Pages were sufficient originality
to merit copyright protection under FEIST.
A. Selection of Classified
Headings
The clearest example of BAPCO's
original selection is its choice of the classified headings
that would be included in the 1984 Yellow Pages. Accord Key
Publications, 945 F.2d at 514 (holding that a publisher's
selection of 260 different categories, even if including
particular categories that have been used in other
directories, involved sufficient creativity to contribute to
the overall originality of a classified directory). BAPCO
selected the approximate 7,000 classified heading in the 1984
Yellow Pages from the 4,700 primary headings and approximately
34,000 related headings in the BAPCO headings book. BAPCO
presented the undisputed testimony of Gerald Brown that the
BAPCO headings book is not standardized to coincide with the
menu of classified headings used in National Yellow Page Sales
Association (NYPSA) publications. Moreover, even if BAPCO's
selection of classified headings is similar to other NYPSA
publications, it would still be copyrightable under FEIST so
long as BAPCO selected independently. See FEIST, 499 U.S. at
----, 111 S.Ct. at 1287, 113 L.Ed.2d at 369 (holding that
"originality does not signify novelty; a work may be original
even though it closely resembles other works so long as the
similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying").
[FN2]
In addition, the testimony of
DONNELLEY'S own witness supports the district court's
conclusion that BAPCO's selection of headings constituted an
original act of selection. DONNELLEY'S corporate
representative, Jon Notestein, responded to a question about
whether DONNELLEY created its headings especially for the
DONNELLEY Miami directory, with the following statement: "What
we have learned in this business after 99 years is that
individual markets may have local terminology that reflect
differently in different parts of the country. So, yes, I'm
sure we have created some headings, classifications to
represent types of business that we didn't normally use in
DONNELLEY in the Mid-west, for example." See Deposition of Jon
Notestein, p.50. In further describing the process of
particularizing headings for a specific directory, Notestein
explained that DONNELLEY maintains a list of over 7,000
headings that are generally applied across the country, but
"in the end the type of business appears in our directory is a
reflection of the marketing and needs of the market and users
of the product. It is an ongoing process changing every day."
See Deposition of Jon Notestein, p. 51 (also stating that
DONNELLEY probably selected its headings for Miami from
"looking at" the 1984 Yellow Pages ).
On appeal, DONNELLEY appears to concede
that copyright protection extends to a publisher's selection
of which headings to include in a particular classified
directory, arguing instead that it did not copy BAPCO's
selection of classified headings. DONNELLEY asserts that its
1985 Miami North directory contains approximately 4,000
headings and that its 1985 Miami South directory contains
approximately 4,300 headings, as compared to the 7,000
headings in BAPCO's 1984 Yellow Pages. Even though more
relevant to the separate issue of substantial copying,
DONNELLEY'S assertion that it independently selected a
substantially smaller and distinct "universe" of classified
headings underscores the originality, and thus
copyrightability of BAPCO's selection of headings. [FN3]
B. Categorizing Businesses Under
Classified Headings
The originality of BAPCO's arrangement
of business listings under a particular classified heading is
also clear under the standard definition of "arrangement" in
the copyright laws. "Arrangement' refers to the ordering or
grouping of data into lists or categories that go beyond the
mere mechanical grouping of data as such, for example, the
alphabetical, chronological, or sequential listings of data.'"
Key Publications, 945 F.2d at 513-14 (quoting Copyright
Office, Guidelines for Registration of Fact-Based Compilations
1 (Rev. Oct. 11, 1989)). In this case, BAPCO presented the
undisputed affidavit testimony of its General
Manager-Publishing, Bob Johnson, regarding BAPCO's grouping of
listings under a particular classified heading. See Exhibit A
to DONNELLEY'S En Banc Brief (copy of Affidavit of Bob
Johnson). Because most business subscribers offer multiple
product lines, goods, and services, Johnson testified that
BAPCO sales representatives were responsible for itemizing the
products or services of a business subscriber, determining the
degree of importance or profitability to the business, and
recommending an appropriate classified heading for listing the
business in the 1984 Yellow Pages. Johnson further testified
that BAPCO annually updates and publishes its heading book in
order to provide sales representatives with a quick-reference
of the approximately 34,000 authorized BAPCO "related
headings" for making recommendations to businesses about
additional listings.
Moreover, Johnson's statements about
the skill and judgment that BAPCO sales representatives
exercise in recommending appropriate related headings is
supported in the statistics that he provided about the 1984
Yellow Pages. Johnson testified that the resulting 1984 Yellow
Pages included 56,459 free business listings and 49,939 paid
listings from a total of 32,559 local, foreign, and national
business subscribers. These statistics on total listings and
advertisers highlight the fundamental error in the majority's
conclusion that BAPCO's grouping of business listings under
classified headings is not an original act of arrangement.
Using DONNELLEY'S figure of approximately 7,000 classified
headings in the 1984 Yellow Pages, it defies logic to conclude
that BAPCO's grouping of over 106,398 business listings from
32,559 different businesses, under approximately 7,000
classified headings amounts to no more than mechanical
grouping of data. The numbers alone indicate that BAPCO had
numerous options for grouping the 106,398 listings among the
7,000 classified headings.
Beyond statistics, however, BAPCO
presented the district court with conclusive evidence
concerning the originality of its groupings of business
listings under classified headings. BAPCO attached to
Johnson's affidavit a sample page from its heading book, which
includes the primary heading of "Bakers-Retail" and related
headings including "Biscuits," "Cakes," "Pastries," "Bagels,"
"Candy & Confectionery," "Caterers," "Cookies &
Crackers," "Delicatessens," "Donuts," "Food Products,"
"Foods-Carry Out," "Grocers-Retail," "Health & Diet Food
Products-Retail," "Pies," "Pretzels," "Restaurants,"
"Sandwiches," "Snack Products," "Wedding Supplies &
Services." Although some primary entries on the sample page
contain less related headings than the "Bakers-Retail"
example, other primary headings contain more related heading
options. Hence, the "Bakers-Retail" example provides a
representative illustration of the wide- ranging choices that
BAPCO sales representatives made in categorizing the 32,559
businesses under the appropriate related headings from the
approximately 34,000 options in the heading book. With so many
related headings to describe a business principally known as a
bakery, BAPCO's arrangement of the listing of a particular
bakery under one, two, three, four, or more headings is
neither "obvious" nor "practically inevitable" as defined in
FEIST. See FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1297, 113
L.Ed.2d at 380. Accordingly, the evidence is clear that
BAPCO's arrangement was in no sense mechanical. On the
contrary, the 1984 Yellow Pages reflects several layers of
BAPCO choices on grouping 106,398 business listings under
approximately 7,000 classified headings, which BAPCO selected
from a heading book containing 4,700 primary entries and
34,000 related headings. Accord Key Publications, 945 F.2d at
514 (holding that a classified publisher's grouping of over
9,000 listings into approximately 260 different categories
constituted original arrangement entitled to copyright
protection).
DONNELLEY challenges BAPCO's evidence
of an original arrangement with repeated assertions that the
businesses themselves, not BAPCO, selected the appropriate
classified heading or headings with which to describe their
businesses. In its reply brief to the panel, DONNELLEY
conceded that if BAPCO supported its "belated allegation that
BAPCO selects the headings, there would result a material
issue of fact, making summary judgment improper on the issue
of infringement." DONNELLEY Panel Reply Brief at p. 13. The
evidence before the district court not only supports BAPCO's
so-called "belated allegation," but the only evidence
presented to the district court conclusively establishes that
BAPCO makes the final decisions on whether to list a business
under a particular classified heading. [FN4]
DONNELLEY does not point to any
independent evidence that it presented on the issue, but
relies on testimony that it elicited from BAPCO's General
Manager-Directory, Gerald Brown, during the October, 1985,
preliminary injunction hearing. Specifically, DONNELLEY relies
on Brown's statements that customers generally select
additional classified headings in the course of a sales
presentation by a BAPCO employee, and his statement that the
owner of Havana Welding made the decision to be listed under
ten different headings, including "Exporter," with the
guidance of a BAPCO sales person. Based on Brown's testimony
about a business owner's role and the fact that business
owners pay BAPCO for the additional listings, DONNELLEY argues
that "it defies logic to even suppose that [businesses] would
leave to a directory publisher any discretion to decide what
business they are in."
DONNELLEY'S argument completely ignores
the undisputed evidence that BAPCO presented on the editorial
role of its Heading Committee in arranging business listings
under a particular classified heading. [FN5] In addition to
discussing the role of a BAPCO sales representative in
recommending related headings to businesses, Gerald Brown
testified via deposition that BAPCO's Heading Committee had
the final responsibility for deciding whether a requested
classified heading was appropriate for inclusion in the 1984
Yellow Pages. Brown further testified that a business's
willingness to pay for a listing under a particular classified
heading did not influence the Heading Committee's decision on
whether to approve the proposed new heading. Moreover, during
the October, 1985, preliminary injunction hearing, Brown
responded to questions about whether BAPCO allowed businesses
to make final decisions on a particular heading based on their
willingness to pay for the advertisement. In response to a
question on redirect, Brown testified that BAPCO would not
allow businesses to select classified headings under a
particular category that is totally incorrect, responding to
the extreme example of a butcher who asked to be listed as a
plumber. See 5SR2-4, p. 133. On recross-examination, Brown
responded to a more subtle example stating that BAPCO would
allow a butcher to be listed as a delicatessen only if the
butcher was in fact a delicatessen, regardless of the
butcher's willingness to pay for a full-page ad under the
"Delicatessen" heading. See 5SR2-4, pp. 133-34. DONNELLEY
fails to point to any evidence contradicting Brown's testimony
regarding the final editorial authority of the Heading
Committee on whether a business would be grouped under a
particular classified heading.
Therefore, the uncontroverted testimony
in this case proves that BAPCO performed an original act of
arrangement in deciding how to group appropriately the 106,398
business listings from 32,559 businesses, under the
approximate 7,000 classified headings in the 1984 Yellow
Pages.
C. Selection of Only Businesses with Business
Telephone Service BAPCO's selection of only businesses with
business telephone service, as opposed to residential service,
is also an act of selection contributing to the originality of
the 1984 Yellow Pages. As noted earlier, selection involves
"the exercise of judgment in choosing which facts from a given
body of data to include in a compilation." See Key
Publications, 945 F.2d at 513. BAPCO exercised such judgment
in choosing only business service subscribers from the body of
data including both business and residential subscribers for
inclusion in the 1984 Yellow Pages. The originality is BAPCO's
choice is amply demonstrated in the fact that DONNELLEY,
unlike BAPCO, would accept listings and advertising from
residential telephone service subscribers in addition to
business telephone service subscribers. For example, the
Assistant Vice-President and General Manager of the Southeast
Operation of DONNELLEY Information Publishing, Louis Sudholz,
testified about the disparate treatment of a hypothetical
prospective customer, "John, the painter." Sudholz testified
that DONNELLEY, unlike BAPCO, would include "John, the
painter" in its directory, regardless of DONNELLEY'S discovery
that John does not have a business telephone and operates out
of a shed in his backyard. See 5SR2-4, pp. 194-95. Based on
the different choices of two competing classified publishers,
it is clear that BAPCO's selection of only businesses with
business telephone service represents an exercise of judgment
that is in no sense automatic or dictated by functional
considerations. Hence, the record also supports the district
court's holding that BAPCO's selection of only business
telephone subscribers for inclusion in its 1984 Yellow Pages
constitutes an original act of selection contributing to the
copyrightability of its compilation. D. Selection of a
Geographic Area to be Covered Comprehensively Although a
closer question, BAPCO's geographic scoping also represents an
original act of selection. BAPCO asserts that its selection of
a geographic scope refers to a choice about what geographic
region would be covered comprehensively in the 1984 Yellow
Pages. BAPCO argues that its selection of a geographic area is
not determined simply based on the scope of a white-page
directory for the same community, but is instead selected
based on BAPCO's evaluation of the shopping habits and desired
shopping areas of consumers within a white-pages community.
DONNELLEY responds that geographic scoping merely refers to
BAPCO's decision about the geographic area for free
distribution of copies of its 1984 Yellow Pages. DONNELLEY
further asserts that BAPCO did not, in fact, limit
advertisements in its directory to businesses in a particular
area. Based on Bob Johnson's affidavit testimony that the 1984
Yellow Pages contains advertisements from 1,772 businesses in
nearby cities and from 2,215 national businesses, the evidence
supports DONNELLEY'S assertion that BAPCO did not limit
classified listings to only businesses in a certain geographic
area. Johnson's testimony also demonstrates that BAPCO
solicited, not selected, the advertisements from national
businesses and businesses in nearby cities. However, the fact
that BAPCO did not limit its 1984 Yellow Pages exclusively to
greater Miami businesses does not dispose of the issue,
because BAPCO's claim of copyrightability is based on its
selection of an area, not individual businesses, to be covered
comprehensively, not exclusively.
The evidence before the district court
supports its conclusion that geographic scoping is an original
act of selection. Besides BAPCO's evidence, DONNELLEY
presented evidence on the uniqueness of its different scoping
choice to cover the greater Miami area in two North and South
Miami regions. In addition, DONNELLEY elicited testimony from
Louis Sudholz on DONNELLEY'S decision to cover the geographic
region between Dallas and Fort Worth in a "Mid-City"
directory. Based on such evidence of how classified publishers
could easily select geographic regions that do not strictly
follow the boundaries of cities, it is clear that the
selection of a geographic region is not "practically
inevitable." See FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1297,
113 L.Ed.2d at 380 (recognizing that the alphabetizing of
names in a white pages is an age-old practice that is
unoriginal and practically inevitable).
The evidence before the district court
also compels a conclusion that the geographic scoping of a
classified directory is not an "obvious" act of selection. See
FEIST, 499 U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1297, 113 L.Ed.2d at 380
(describing a white-page publisher's selection of basic
information--name, town, and telephone number--as "obvious"
and lacking sufficient creativity to make it original). On
this point, BAPCO presented "DONNELLEY Directory Publishing
Start-Up Business Plan October 21, 1984," which discussed
DONNELLEY'S own geographic scoping decisions as being based on
"extensive research [leading DONNELLEY] to scope differently
from its competitors." See 6SR12-34, Volume IV--Appendix to
Summary Memorandum of BellSouth Advertising & Publishing
Corporation, p. DM207045 (stating that DONNELLEY generally
will scope to cover areas of two or more telco directories,
and stating that "more logical scoping is intended to be a key
selling point for [DONNELLEY]"). Therefore, even though
DONNELLEY now argues that geographic scoping represents an
obvious decision lacking a modicum of creativity, the evidence
before the district court was uncontroverted that geographic
scoping results from thoughtful analysis of research on
shopping habits and analysis of how to distinguish one
directory from its competitors. [FN6] Such thoughtful
selection is sufficient under FEIST to contribute to the
originality of the 1984 Yellow Pages. See FEIST, 499 U.S. at
----, 111 S.Ct. at 1294, 113 L.Ed.2d at 377 (explaining that
"the originality requirement is not particularly
stringent").
In sum, the record on this case
demonstrates that BAPCO performed at least four original acts
of selection and arrangement: (1) the selection of 7,000
classified headings; (2) the arrangement of 106,398 business
listings, from 32,559 businesses under the 7,000 classified
headings; (3) the selection of only businesses with business
telephone service, as opposed to businesses having either
business service or residential service; and (4) the selection
of a geographic area to be covered comprehensively in the 1984
Yellow Pages. Accordingly, I would hold that BAPCO performed
four acts of selection or arrangement which are sufficiently
original to merit copyright protection. The analysis of
BAPCO's infringement claim, however, does not end with a
finding of originality. This court must next determine whether
DONNELLEY copied those constituent elements of selection and
arrangement which are copyrightable.
III. Substantial Copying of BAPCO's
Original Selection or Arrangement
Because the copyright in a factual
compilation is "thin," a plaintiff must prove "substantial
similarity" between the defendant's compilation and the
original elements of the plaintiff's compilation. Key
Publications, 945 F.2d at 514 (adopting the "substantial
similarity" test for infringement, and rejecting arguments
that FEIST requires a subsequent compiler to produce an "exact
replica" of the copyrighted compilation); see also Majority
Opinion at n. 21 (citing favorably the Key Publications test);
Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co. v. Associated Tel. Directory
Publishers, 756 F.2d 801, 810-11 (11th Cir.1985) (applying the
"substantially similarity" test). Therefore, in order for
BAPCO to prevail on its infringement claim, it must prove that
DONNELLEY substantially appropriated the particular elements
of selection or arrangement that are original. Based on the
previous discussion identifying those elements of selection or
arrangement that are copyrightable, BAPCO must prove that
DONNELLEY substantially appropriated BAPCO's selection of
classified headings, arrangement of business listings under
classified headings, selection of only businesses with
business telephone service, or selection of a geographic area
to be covered comprehensively.
A proper analysis of whether DONNELLEY
substantially appropriated BAPCO's original selection or
arrangement requires this court to analyze separately each of
the three acts of copying at issue in this case. The district
court concluded that DONNELLEY engaged in the following three
acts of copying: (1) hiring Appalachian Computer Services,
Inc. (Appalachian), a data entry company in London, Kentucky,
to key BAPCO's compilation into a computer database; (2) using
the computer database to print out sales lead sheets that
represented a reproduction of substantially the entire 1984
Yellow Pages in inverted or crisscross form; and (3)
publishing the 1985 Miami North and 1985 Miami South
directories based on the information copied into the computer
database and onto the sales lead sheets. See BellSouth, 719
F.Supp. at 1558-59. Similarly, this court should evaluate each
alleged act of copying separately. [FN7]
A. Computer Database
DONNELLEY does not dispute that it
obtained copies of the 1984 Yellow Pages, separated and
mounted each sheet individually, and assigned a classified
heading code, advertising code, and directory code for every
business listing. It is also undisputed that Appalachian keyed
the following information into a computer database: name,
address, telephone number, code corresponding to a classified
heading, code corresponding to the unit of advertising, and a
code for the directory from which the listing came.
Appalachian stored this information on magnetic tape and sent
it to DONNELLEY for reproduction in the form of sales lead
sheets. The only factual dispute concerning the creation of
the computer database derives from DONNELLEY'S assertion that
Appalachian entered a code corresponding to a previously
chosen DONNELLEY classified heading, as opposed to a code
corresponding to the BAPCO heading directly next to each
code.
The record support's DONNELLEY'S
version of the alleged factual dispute. Several DONNELLEY
employees testified that Appalachian keyed-in heading codes
that corresponded to headings in a DONNELLEY heading book. For
example, Gary Johnson explained that if we found a heading on
our database that had a heading code which was similar or the
same meaning as the BAPCO heading, we used our heading, the
DONNELLEY support file heading. We didn't directly copy the
heading from the BAPCO book. We used our heading. This heading
code is a DONNELLEY heading code that applies to a support
file, mechanized support file, that we maintain in Terre Haute
[, Indiana, a DONNELLEY Publishing Center]. Deposition of Gary
Johnson, at p. 143. Johnson further testified that he sent
Appalachian a "DONNELLEY heading book" and "asked Appalachian
to use [the DONNELLEY heading book] and find alike [sic] or
similar, in our book to the BAPCO book." Deposition of Gary
Johnson, at p. 254. Johnson's testimony, along with that of
other DONNELLEY employees, resolves the alleged factual
dispute and makes it clear that Appalachian keyed a heading
code that corresponded to a heading in the DONNELLEY heading
book. But, the mere fact that Appalachian entered codes that
corresponded to a heading in DONNELLEY'S own heading book does
not resolve the issue.
The relevant question is whether
Appalachian entered codes that corresponded to DONNELLEY'S
previously selected menu of headings for particular use in its
Miami directories, not whether Appalachian entered codes
corresponding to a heading in a DONNELLEY heading book that
DONNELLEY uses for compiling directories generally. As
discussed earlier, the evidence is undisputed that BAPCO
selected approximately 7,000 classified headings from those in
its heading book containing 4,700 primary entries and
approximately 34,000 authorized related headings. Therefore,
the originality of BAPCO's selection of headings is based on
its selection of approximately 7,000 headings for inclusion in
the 1984 Yellow Pages, not the selection of the nearly 40,000
authorized headings in the BAPCO heading book. In considering
whether DONNELLEY copied BAPCO's selection of headings from
the 1984 Yellow Pages, Johnson's testimony makes it apparent
that DONNELLEY did not previously select headings from its own
heading book for inclusion in its 1985 Miami North and 1985
Miami South directories. Instead, Johnson testified that
DONNELLEY merely sent Appalachian its heading book so that
Appalachian could assign a code to each BAPCO heading that
corresponded to a like or similar heading in the DONNELLEY
heading book.
Johnson's testimony is bolstered in the
testimony of Jon Notestein, who made the following statement
in response to a question about how DONNELLEY selected
classified headings that reflected needs of the market and
users in Miami: "They were probably created by looking at the
directories representing Miami, [the BAPCO directory]." See
Deposition of Jon C. Notestein, pp. 50-52; see also DONNELLEY
En Banc Reply Brief, p. 19 n. 14 (conceding that Notestein
testified that DONNELLEY used the 1984 Yellow Pages in order
to refine its preexisting set of headings for use in
Florida).
Therefore, even resolving the alleged
factual dispute regarding Appalachian's coding of headings in
favor of DONNELLEY'S version, Johnson's and Notestein's
testimony makes it clear that DONNELLEY did not previously
select a universe of headings for particular use in its Miami
directories. Instead, DONNELLEY copied BAPCO's selection of
headings with what can only be described as a high-tech
copying process. DONNELLEY'S high-tech copying involved
Appalachian keying codes rather than the words of BAPCO
headings into a database, from which the wording of the BAPCO
headings could be reconstructed later using the DONNELLEY
heading book as a decoder.
Besides the evidence showing that
DONNELLEY substantially appropriated BAPCO's selection of
headings, DONNELLEY'S stipulation regarding what information
Appalachian keyed into the computer database leaves no factual
dispute that DONNELLEY also substantially appropriated BAPCO's
other original acts of selection and arrangement. As
previously discussed, BAPCO's original acts of selection or
arrangement included the selection of approximately 7,000
headings for particular use in the 1984 Yellow Pages; the
arrangement of 106,398 listings from 32,559 businesses under
the approximately 7,000 classified headings; the selection of
only businesses with business telephone service; and the
selection of a geographic area to be covered comprehensively
in the directory. It is undisputed that Appalachian keyed into
the computer database every business listing with a
corresponding heading code and a code indicating the directory
source for every listing in the 1984 Yellow Pages. Although
the keying of each code in isolation would amount to the
lawful copying of facts, Appalachian's grouping of the
business listing with an associated heading code and a
directory code amounts to the appropriation of virtually all
of BAPCO's original acts of selection and arrangement. That
is, DONNELLEY copied BAPCO's selection of headings based on
Appalachian's keying of a heading code, even if it
corresponded to headings in DONNELLEY'S own heading book, for
virtually every heading used in the 1984 Yellow Pages.
DONNELLEY copied BAPCO's arrangement of business listings
under a particular classified heading based on Appalachian's
grouping of the business listing data with a heading code that
corresponded to a heading like or similar to BAPCO's.
DONNELLEY copied BAPCO's selection of only businesses with
business telephone service based on Appalachian's keying of
every business listed in the 1984 Yellow Pages. In addition,
DONNELLEY copied BAPCO's selection of a geographic area based
on Appalachian's grouping of the business listing data and the
code indicating the directory source.
Because the keyed information was
stored in or on some material object until later printed on
the sales lead sheets, DONNELLEY'S creation of the computer
database represents an act of "copying" as defined in the
Copyright Act. See 17 U.S.C. s 101 (defining a copy as a
material object "in which a work is fixed by any method now
known or later developed, and from which the work can be
perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either
directly or with the aid of a machine or device").
Accordingly, I would hold that DONNELLEY'S substantial
appropriation of BAPCO's original acts of selection or
arrangement in creating the computer database, represented an
act of copyright infringement.
B. Sales Lead Sheets
DONNELLEY'S substantial appropriation
of BAPCO's original act of selection or arrangement is also
apparent in the printed sales lead sheets. As discussed
previously, DONNELLEY stipulated in the district court that it
prepared the sales lead sheets from the following information
obtained from the 1984 Yellow Pages: (1) telephone
number--under the first column; (2) name-- under the second
column; (3) address--under the third column; (4) kind of
business--under the fourth column; and (5) unit of
advertising--under the fifth column. A visual examination of
the printed sales lead sheets shows that the sales lead sheets
also contain rate information under the sixth column and a
directory code under the seventh column. Because it is
uncontroverted that the sales lead sheets represented merely a
printed version of the same information that Appalachian keyed
into the computer database, the previous analysis of how
DONNELLEY substantially appropriated BAPCO's original
selection or arrangement in creating the database applies
equally to its printing of the sales lead sheets. Hence, I
would also hold that DONNELLEY'S printing sales lead sheets
using the information already copied into the computer
database, represented a second act of copyright
infringement.
Even though a discussion of the sales
lead sheets necessarily turns on analysis of the information
keyed into the computer database, the printed sales lead
sheets have independent significance because the sales lead
sheets, not the actual directories, constituted the chief
visual evidence of copying in the district court. In the
district court, DONNELLEY stipulated that the seven lead
sheets attached to BAPCO's motion for preliminary injunction
were representative of all the thousands of sales lead sheets
that DONNELLEY created. DONNELLEY now attempts to retreat from
its concession concerning the representativeness of the sales
lead sheets and to retry this case based on a visual
comparison of the 1984 Yellow Pages and the 1985 Miami North
and 1985 Miami South directories. In its En Banc Reply Brief,
DONNELLEY responds to BAPCO's assertions of substantial
similarity based on the seven lead sheets with the following
argument: "BAPCO bases this assertion entirely on a chart
drawn from just seven of the thousands of lead sheets produced
by DONNELLEY for Miami. However, BAPCO's chart 'conclusively
demonstrates' only that a small sample can produce a
misleading result." See DONNELLEY En Banc Reply Brief, p. 22
(citations omitted). DONNELLEY continues its response with its
newly created chart comparing the headings in the 1984 Yellow
Pages and those used in the 1985 Miami North and 1985 Miami
South directories.
DONNELLEY'S arguments are fatally
flawed in that they rely on a visual comparison of the actual
directories, which DONNELLEY admits that it only recently, on
January 27, 1993, moved for leave to place physical copies of
the three directories in the record on appeal. See DONNELLEY
En Banc Reply Brief, p. 22 n. 16. Likewise, DONNELLEY failed
to present the chart comparing the headings in the three
directories to the district court, attaching it for the first
time as an appendix in its En Banc Reply Brief. See DONNELLEY
En Banc Reply Brief, p. 22 n. 17 (explaining the results of
its new analysis as indicated in Appendix A of the En Banc
Reply Brief). [FN8] This court generally bases a reversal of a
district court on evidence that the district court considered.
The majority's outright reversal of the district court based
upon its original 'findings' from a visual comparison of
selected pages from the published directories, places this
court in the novel position of retrying this case rather than
reviewing it. Because DONNELLEY'S own stipulation as to the
representativeness of the sales lead sheets led the district
court to reach what DONNELLEY now calls a "misleading result,"
this court must affirm the district court's conclusion on the
substantial similarity issue. At a minimum, this court is
required to remand to the district court for consideration of
DONNELLEY'S new theory of the case which hinges on a
comparative analysis of pages from the published
directories.
Unlike DONNELLEY, BAPCO did present the
district court with a comparative analysis of the seven lead
sheets showing the virtual identity between BAPCO headings and
DONNELLEY headings. BAPCO presented the affidavit testimony of
Barbara Wiggs, who explained her findings on the similarities
between information on the sales lead sheets and that in the
1984 Yellow Pages. Based on line-by-line comparisons of the
sales lead sheets to the 1984 Yellow Pages, Wiggs concluded
that "the listing information on the attached DONNELLEY Sales
Lead sheets were identical to the 1984 Yellow Pages
directories, except for a small number of very minor
discrepancies." See 6SR10-17, pp. 11-12, Affidavit of Barbara
J. Wiggs, in Volume 1--Appendix to Summary Memorandum of
Bellsouth Advertising & Publishing Corporation.
Specifically, Wiggs listed her findings of complete identity
except for the following entries: (1) Evian associated with
the heading "Water Coolers" instead of "Water
Coolers-Renting"; (2) Star Appliances being associated with
the heading "Air Conditioning-Room Units" instead of "Air
Conditioning Equipment--Room Units"; (3) Star Appliances being
associated with the heading "Television Dealers--Retail"
instead of "Television & Radio--Dealers"; (4) Star
Appliances being associated with the heading "Vacuum
Cleaners--SYSTEM Household--Dealers" instead of "Vacuum
Cleaners--Household--Dealers"; (5) Star Appliances being
associated with the heading "Vacuum Cleaners--S Household--
Dealers" instead of "Vacuum Cleaners--Household--Dealers"; and
(6) Audiotron- High Fidelity Corp. being associated with the
address of "145 S.W. 52nd Avenue" instead of "145-147 S.W.
52nd Avenue Second Floor." Wiggs's conclusion that the
discrepancies were "minor" is entirely reasonable in light of
the fact that the seven lead sheets contain information
concerning seven different businesses, appearing under forty
different headings in the 1984 Yellow Pages, for a total of
sixty-eight listings, averaging five different headings and
ten listings. It is also significant to note that the headings
on the lead sheets ranged from "Gas--Industrial & Medical
Cylinder & Bulk" to "Antiques-- Repairing &
Restoring." The identity between the headings on the lead
sheets and those in the 1984 Yellow Pages included even the
hyphens and the ampersands.
Based on DONNELLEY'S stipulation that
the seven sales lead sheets were representative and Wiggs's
testimony on the virtual identity between the headings and
other information on the sales lead sheets and that in the
1984 Yellow Pages, the chief visual evidence in the district
court conclusively shows that DONNELLEY'S printing of the
sales lead sheets represented a second act of substantial
appropriation of BAPCO's original acts of selection or
arrangement.
C. The DONNELLEY Directories
As previously discussed, only a small
portion of the arguments and evidence before the district
court related to a visual comparison of published copies of
the actual directories. In its opinion, the district court
references a comparison of the directories only three times.
The first reference is the district court's statement that "a
comparison of the two (2) directories reveal that DONNELLEY
used a format nearly identical to that used by BAPCO. See
Exhibit P and P Enlarged to BAPCO's Brief." See BellSouth, 719
F.Supp. at 1559. In their February, 1993, letters to the clerk
of this court regarding requests for certain portions of the
record, both parties agreed that the district court did not
refer to the BAPCO and DONNELLEY directories when referencing
Exhibit P and P Enlarged. In fact, Exhibit P and P Enlarged
are copies of a sales solicitation form of Associated
Telephone Directory Publishers that this court reproduced as
Appendix A in Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. v. Associated Tel.
Directory Publishers, 756 F.2d 801, 813-14 (11th Cir.1985).
DONNELLEY stated in its February 22, 1993, letter to the clerk
that "Exhibits P and P enlarged do not involve any yellow
pages directory at issue in the present appeal" and that the
district court cited the exhibits erroneously. BAPCO responded
that the district court correctly referred to the exhibits
from the Southern Bell opinion, but only for the limited
purposes of showing what the Southern Bell court considered to
be a copyrightable format, and showing that DONNELLEY'S format
as evidenced in the sales lead sheets was nearly identical to
that of BAPCO. Regardless of why the district court referenced
Exhibits P and P Enlarged, the fact that the parties agree
that the district court was not referencing pages from the
BAPCO or DONNELLEY directories makes it uncontroverted that
the district court was not stating that it performed
page-by-page visual comparison of the 1984 Yellow Pages and
the DONNELLEY directories.
The second suggestion that the district
court visually compared the disputed directories, is the
district court's discussion of the evidence of "common
errors." See BellSouth, 719 F.Supp. at 1559 & n. 23. But,
in discussing the common errors in the three directories, the
district court referenced pages from the directories that
BAPCO attached to the Second Affidavit of Barbara J. Wiggs.
See BellSouth, 719 F.Supp. at 1559 n. 23. The district court
did not cite pages in complete published copies of the
directories. Similarly, in concluding that the directories are
substantially similar, the district court cites the Barbara
Wiggs affidavit and Gerald Brown testimony rather than pages
from the published directories. See BellSouth, 719 F.Supp. at
1559-60. Therefore, none of the references in the district
court's opinion provide a basis for this court to engage in
side-by-side comparisons of all pages in the 1984 Yellow Pages
with those in the 1985 Miami North and 1985 Miami South
directories. It is only possible to conclude that the district
court examined the pages of the directories that BAPCO
attached to the Second Affidavit of Barbara J. Wiggs. Because
DONNELLEY failed to present its own comparative analysis of
pages from the actual directories and also failed to place
physical copies of the directories in the record until
January, 1993, this court is required to limit its
determination on the substantial similarity of the directories
to those pages attached to the Second Affidavit of Barbara J.
Wiggs, and only to the extent of Wiggs's comparative analysis.
The district court relied on Wiggs's analysis of pages from
the directories as support for the following conclusion:
"Although DONNELLEY'S directory is not identical to BAPCO's
directory, the material was copied and used to produce a
directory substantially similar in both content and format."
See BellSouth, 719 F.Supp. at 1559-60 (citing Affidavit of
Barbara Wiggs and October, 1985, testimony of Gerald Brown).
In her affidavit, Wiggs identified twenty-five errors that
were common to both the 1984 Yellow Pages and the DONNELLEY
directories. See 6SR11-18, Second Affidavit of Barbara J.
Wiggs, pp. 2-19. For example, Wiggs explained that BAPCO
incorrectly listed Fort Lauderdale News under the heading
"Balancing Equipment" in the 1984 Yellow Pages, and that
DONNELLEY'S 1985 Miami North directory also lists Fort
Lauderdale News under a "Balancing Equipment" heading. See
BellSouth, 719 F.Supp. at 1559 n. 23 (also noting the example
of the common erroneous listing of "Flash Courier Systems"
even though the subscriber's telephone was disconnected before
January 1, 1984).
The presence of common errors is "one
of the most significant evidences of infringement." Callaghan
v. Myers, 128 U.S. 617, 662, 9 S.Ct. 177, 190, 32 L.Ed. 547
(1888). Based on the earlier conclusions that the 1984 Yellow
Pages constitutes an original selection and arrangement of
facts that is copyrightable, Wiggs's testimony regarding the
presence of common errors is relevant to rebut DONNELLEY'S
repeated assertions that it used the 1984 Yellow Pages "only
to ascertain the fact revealed by BAPCO's heading--the kind of
business carried on by the listed firm--so as to enable
DONNELLEY to classify that firm in its own system of
classification." See DONNELLEY En Banc Reply Brief at p. 20;
see also, DONNELLEY En Banc Brief at p. 12. DONNELLEY'S
assertions that it independently classified businesses using
its own heading scheme is wholly unbelievable when one
considers the statistical improbability of two publishers
independently classifying the same newspaper as a "Balancing
Equipment" dealer. Therefore, the presence of the common
errors in the published directories is significant evidence
that DONNELLEY substantially appropriated BAPCO's original
arrangement of business listings under particular classified
headings.
As further evidence of DONNELLEY'S
substantial appropriation of BAPCO's grouping of listings
under particular headings, Wiggs's affidavit included a
heading comparison based on a random selection of DONNELLEY
headings and a comparison of the listings appearing under
those headings with the listings appearing under the
corresponding headings in the 1984 Yellow Pages. BAPCO
presented the district court with the following chart
summarizing Wiggs's findings regarding the percentage of
correlation between the listings under particular headings in
the DONNELLEY directories and those in the 1984 Yellow
Pages:
Heading North Miami South Miami
--------------------------------- ------------------------
"Bail Bonds" 68% 55% "Boxes, Corrugated & Fiber" 86% 100%
"Ceilings" 64% 50% "Driving Instruction" 72% 73%
"Engineers--Civil" 88% 86% "Furniture--Outdoors" 63% 70%
"Gold, Silver & Platinum Dealers" 95% 85%
---------- See 6SR5-3 Reply to
DONNELLEY'S Memorandum in Opposition to Motion for Partial
Summary Judgment on Copyright Infringement by Bellsouth
Advertising & Publishing Corporation and Memorandum in
Opposition to DONNELLEY'S Copyright Partial Summary Judgment
Motion, p. 40 (March 6, 1986).
As the chart indicates, Wiggs found a
high (averaging seventy-five percent) statistical correlation
of listings under particular headings when comparing the 1984
Yellow Pages with the DONNELLEY directories. DONNELLEY did not
respond with its own correlation analysis, and thus, Wiggs's
findings represent further undisputed evidence that
DONNELLEY'S published directories contain a substantially
similar arrangement of business listings under particular
classified headings. Accord see Key Publications, 945 F.2d at
515, 517 (finding no substantial similarity based on the lack
of any evidence that the defendant copied an entire category
of the plaintiff's directory, but explaining that a finding of
infringement would succeed if the defendant had exactly
duplicated a substantial designated portion of the plaintiff's
directory such as all of the listings of professionals such as
medical doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, and
architects).
To the extent that Wiggs's analysis of
the directories was misleading, it is an elementary rule on
summary judgment that the burden shifted to DONNELLEY to
produce its own comparative analysis of the published
directories in order to rebut the undisputed evidence of
substantial similarity in Wiggs's affidavit. See United States
v. Four Parcels of Real Property, 941 F.2d 1428, 1438 (11th
Cir.1991) (recognizing that the burden on summary judgment
shifts to the non-moving party once the moving party has met
its initial responsibility of showing the absence of a triable
issue of fact, and that the moving party is entitled to
summary judgment if the non-moving party fails to make a
sufficient showing on an essential element of the case);
Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(e). As a non-moving party opposing a motion
for summary judgment which BAPCO supported with affidavits,
DONNELLEY could not simply rely on legal conclusions or
evidence which would be inadmissible at trial in order to meet
its burden of coming forward with relevant and competent
evidence. See Avirgan v. Hull, 932 F.2d 1572, 1577 (11th
Cir.1991). In the district court, DONNELLEY failed to respond
to the evidence in Wiggs's affidavit showing substantial
similarity in the arrangement of listings under headings in
the published directories. Contrary to DONNELLEY'S assertions
to the en banc court, DONNELLEY also failed to present
evidence to the district court that the selection of headings
in its published directories was substantially smaller and
different from those in the 1984 Yellow Pages. Compare
DONNELLEY En Banc Brief at p. 12 and BAPCO En Banc Brief at p.
3 (attaching as "Exhibit 2" those portions of the record that
DONNELLEY cites). Instead of responding to BAPCO's evidence in
the district court, DONNELLEY waited until January, 1993,
before moving to place the published directories in the
record. See DONNELLEY En Banc Reply Brief p. 22 n. 16.
DONNELLEY also waited until its En Banc Reply Brief before
presenting a comparative analysis of the heading structure in
the published directories. See DONNELLEY En Banc Reply Brief,
pp. 22-23 & n. 17. Stated simply, DONNELLEY waited too
late to meet its burden of presenting competent evidence to
oppose BAPCO's motion for summary judgment. Because Wiggs's
affidavit represented the only evidence before the district
court concerning the substantial similarity of the published
directories, I would affirm the district court's conclusion
that DONNELLEY substantially appropriated BAPCO's original
acts of selection and arrangement when publishing the 1985
Miami North and 1985 Miami South directories. [FN9]
In sum, the uncontroverted evidence
before the district court shows that DONNELLEY substantially
appropriated BAPCO's original selection and arrangement in the
1984 Yellow Pages with three separate acts of copying: (1)
keying-in that selection and arrangement into the computer
database; (2 printing the sales lead sheets from the data in
the computer database; and (3) using the computer database and
the sales lead sheets to publish the DONNELLEY directories
with a substantially similar selection of headings and
substantially similar arrangement or grouping of listings
under particular headings. Accordingly, I would affirm the
judgment of the district court granting summary judgment in
favor of BAPCO on all three claims that DONNELLEY infringed
its compilation copyright in the 1984 Yellow Pages. [FN10]
Because the majority reaches the
opposite result based on an utter failure to analyze the
evidence presented to the district court under the controlling
legal principles announced in FEIST, and also based on an
unwarranted departure from well-established rules limiting
this court's review to arguments and evidence presented in the
district court, I must respectfully DISSENT.
DISSENTING OPINION FOOTNOTES
FN1. During the discussion of the
evidence presented to the district court, I will also discuss
the evidence presented and the new theories advanced at the
"en banc trial."
FN2. In reasoning that BAPCO's
selection of headings lack originality because many resemble
NYPSA headings, the majority completely ignores the FEIST
Court's holding that an independent selection of data need not
be "novel" in order to be deemed original. See Majority op. at
p. 1443.
FN3. In reaching its over-broad
conclusion that none of BAPCO's selection, coordination, or
arrangement is copyrightable, the majority merges the issues
of originality and substantial copying. In doing so, the
majority allows DONNELLEY to defeat BAPCO's claim of original
selection, the first issue before this court, based on new
evidence presented for the first time on appeal that relates
mainly to the second, substantial similarity issue. Regarding
the substantial similarity issue, the majority concludes that
DONNELLEY presented evidence showing that it "established its
own system of headings." The majority relies on citations to
the record that DONNELLEY uses in support of its new assertion
that it selected "a smaller universe" of classified headings.
See Majority op. at 1443. The majority's reliance on these
citations is misplaced for two reasons. First, as BAPCO
argues, none of DONNELLEY'S citations actually support the
"smaller universe" assertion. See BAPCO En Banc Brief at p. 3
(compiling all portions of the record that DONNELLEY cites as
"Exhibit 2"). Moreover, as discussed fully in section III-A,
the relevant question is whether DONNELLEY proved that it
selected a menu of classified headings for particular use in
compiling its South Florida directories, not whether DONNELLEY
entered codes corresponding to a general universe of headings
in the DONNELLEY heading book.
FN4. The majority summarily concludes
that "it is the subscriber who selects" a particular
classified heading without any discussion of BAPCO's evidence
on this issue. See Majority op. at p. 1443.
FN5. The majority blindly accepts
DONNELLEY'S argument that BAPCO surrenders ultimate editorial
authority to advertisers without any consideration of BAPCO's
obvious need to maintain final editorial discretion in order
to protect the integrity and accuracy of its
compilation.
FN6. The majority reaches the
conclusion that geographic scoping is an obvious and
inevitable act of selection based on cursory analysis that
analogizes the geographic scoping involved in classified
directories to the scoping of white pages. However, as the
majority points out, this case concerns a "directory of a
different color." That distinction requires this court to
thoroughly analyze the evidence under the FEIST principles.
Instead of such analysis, the majority's holding appears to be
based on the mistaken notion that deciding copyright cases
requires no more than an application of the collective common
sense of judges.
FN7. The majority not only merges its
analysis of the originality and the substantial similarity
issues, as previously noted, the majority also intertwines its
slight discussion of DONNELLEY'S first two alleged acts of
copying, the computer database and sales lead sheets, with its
exhaustive discussion of the lack of similarity between the
actual published directories. The majority's focus on the
distinguishable features of DONNELLEY'S published directories,
with only slight mention of the computer database and sales
lead sheets, is not consistent with the development of facts
in this case. That is, DONNELLEY'S alleged copying of BAPCO's
compilation into the computer database and onto the sales lead
sheets occurred before BAPCO filed this action putting
DONNELLEY on notice. DONNELLEY'S actual publication of the
1985 Miami North and 1985 Miami South Directories occurred
after BAPCO filed this action and after the district court
denied BAPCO's motion for a preliminary injunction. Hence, it
is not at all surprising that DONNELLEY'S published
directories contain a number of distinguishable
features.
FN8. Contrary to settled principles of
finality, the majority permits DONNELLEY to back away from its
stipulation in the district court regarding the
representativeness of the seven lead sheets. Instead of
considering the seven sales lead sheets and analysis of them
as presented to the district court, the majority relies
heavily on a visual comparison of selected pages from the
three published directories. Indeed, it is unusual that this
copyright case proceeded from October, 1985, to October, 1988,
in the district court without the parties submitting complete
physical copies of the disputed publications. But, it was this
court, not the district court, that admitted the directories
into the record in response to the parties' joint motion of
January, 1993. The majority properly, albeit implicitly,
declines DONNELLEY'S request that this en banc court to engage
in a side-by-side visual comparison of all pages in three
published directories. See DONNELLEY En Ban Reply Brief, p. 22
nn. 16 & 17. However, the majority's visual comparison of
selected pages from the directories is equally unfounded. As
discussed fully in section III-C, the record before the
district court consisted of a total of approximately forty
pages from the published directories. Nothing in the district
court opinion indicates that the district court actually made
a side-by-side visual comparison of those pages except
possibly to verify the conclusions in the Affidavit of Barbara
J. Wiggs.
FN9. Incredibly, the majority ignores
the fact that DONNELLEY failed to meet its burden of coming
forward with relevant and competent evidence to rebut BAPCO's
affidavit evidence. In doing so, the majority departs from the
settled rule that a non-moving party may lose at the summary
judgment stage based on its failure to come forward with
competent evidence showing a genuine issue of material fact.
See Four Parcels, 941 F.2d at 1438. As a replacement for the
established rules concerning summary judgment, the majority's
reliance on its original fact-finding in a visual comparison
of pages from the published directories, establishes a new and
absurd rule that a non-moving party failing to meet its burden
in the district court may nonetheless win outright judgment
with evidence considered for the first time on
appeal.
FN10. In addition, for the reasons
stated in the now vacated panel opinion, Bellsouth, 933 F.2d
at 960-61, I would affirm the district court's rejection of
DONNELLEY'S "fair use" and "antitrust misuse" defenses.
|