Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises

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 (more)
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
Case opinions
Majority O'Connor, joined by Burger, Blackmun, Powell, Rehnquist, Stevens
Dissent Brennan, joined by White, Marshall
Laws applied
U.S. Const.
Copyright Act of 1976

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.

Contents

Facts

Former President Gerald Ford had written a memoir including an account of his decision to pardon Richard Nixon. Ford had licensed his publication rights to Harper & Row, which had contracted for excerpts of the memoir to be printed in TIME. Instead, The Nation magazine published 300 to 400 words of verbatim quotes from the 500-page book 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.

A Federal trial judge ruled in favor of Harper & Row and awarded damages. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling, finding that the Nation's actions in quoting the memoirs were protected by fair use privilege. Harper & Row appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court.

Issue

The issue before the Court was whether a fair use existed where the purported infringer published a public figure’s unpublished work on an important public event.

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, asserting that "the promise of copyright would be an empty one if it could be avoided merely by dubbing the infringement a fair use 'news report' of the book." The court applied the traditional four factor test to determine if the use was fair, and made the following findings:

  1. The purpose or character of the use was commercial (to scoop a competitor), meaning that The Nation's use was not a good faith use of Fair Use in simply reporting news.
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work was informative.
  3. 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.
  4. 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 robust debate of public issues" outweighed the limited power of copyright ownership.

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