Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises

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Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued November 6, 1984
Decided May 20, 1985


Full case name:	Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, et al. v. Nation Enterprises, et al.

Citations:	471 U.S. 539; 105 S. Ct. 2218; 85 L. Ed. 2d 588; 1985 U.S. LEXIS 17; 53 U.S.L.W. 4562; 225 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 1073; 11 Media L. Rep. 1969

Prior history:	Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

Holding

The Court determined that fair use is not a defense to the appropriation of work by a famous political figure simply because of the public interest in learning of that political figure's account of an historic event.

Court membership

Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor

Case opinions

Majority by: O'Connor
Joined by: Burger, Blackmun, Powell, Rehnquist, Stevens
Dissent by: Brennan
Joined by: White, Marshall

Laws applied

U.S. Const.

Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985)^[1], was a United States Supreme Court decision that determined that fair use is not a defense to the appropriation of work by a famous political figure simply because of the public interest in learning of that political figure's account of an historic event.

1 Facts
2 Issue
3 Opinion of the Court
4 External link

[edit] Facts

In this case, former President Gerald Ford had written memoir including an account of his decision to pardon Richard Nixon. Ford had licensed his publication rights to Harper & Row, which had contracted for the memoir to be printed in TIME. Instead, The Nation magazine published significant excerpts of this account without the permission of Ford, Harper & Row, or Time Magazine. Based on this prior publication, Time withdrew from the contract (as it was permitted to by a clause therein), and Harper & Row filed a lawsuit against The Nation for copyright infringement. The Nation asserted as a defense that Ford was a public figure, and his reasons for pardoning Nixon were of vital interest, and that appropriation in such circumstances should qualify as a fair use.

[edit] Issue

The issue before the Court was whether a fair use existed where purported infringer published a public figure’s work on an important public event.

[edit] Opinion of the Court

The Court, in an opinion by Justice O'Connor noted that the right of first publication is a particularly strong right, and held that there was no 'public figure' exception to copyright protection. The court applied the traditional four factor test to determine if the use was fair, and made the following findings:

The purpose or character of the use was commercial (to scoop a competitor).
The nature of the copyrighted work was informative.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole was great, as it constituted a substantial portion of the infringer's work. The Court noted that the infringer could not defend plagiarism by pointing to how much else they could have plagiarized, but did not.
The effect of the use on the potential market for the value of the copyrighted work was also great, because there was an actual harm – the cancelled contract.

Justice Brennan dissented, joined by Justice White and Justice Marshall. They felt that the importance of the issue outweighed the limited power of copyright ownership.