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New York Times v. Tasini
(U.S. Supreme Court)
Copyrights and collective works
The Supreme Court held 6/25/01 that electronic databases that reproduce individual articles contributed by freelance writers to collective publications (e.g., newspapers, magazines, etc.) are not privileged by § 201(c) of the Copyright Act, and thus infringe on the writers’ copyrights. Agreeing with the reasoning of the Second Circuit, the Court held that because such databases reproduce individual articles independent of the context in which they originally appeared (i.e., surrounding articles, photographs, advertisements, etc.), such reproduction could not be deemed a reproduction or revision of the original publication, nor the production of a later collective work within the same series. Consequently, electronic databases such as NEXIS may no longer include in their public offerings individually copyrighted material extracted from collective works without first obtaining the author’s permission. The decision is important to all publishers.
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