ELEVENTH CIRCUIT RULES IN FAVOR OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IN IMPORTANT COPYRIGHT ROYALTY CASE AFTER A DECADE OF LITIGATION

For over a decade, the National Geographic Society has fought photographers and writers over whether it must pay additional royalties associated with the sale of its Complete National Geographic digital archive series, which it markets through its usual channels.

On Monday, June 30th, the Eleventh Circuit, in a sharply divided 7-4 decision, ruled in favor of National Geographic and against a Florida photographer whose work appeared in National Geographic magazine.

As law.com reports, 17 U.S.C. § 201(c) is the copyright statute at issue. The ruling turns on what constitutes an acceptable revision and what constitutes a new work in light of a 2001 Supreme Court landmark copyright ruling, New York Times v. Tasini.

The Court in Tasini held that publishers, like Lexis/Nexis, must get copyright permission to reprint freelance writer's articles on its database. The Eleventh Circuit ruling, distinguishes between reproduction of freelance works for a company's database and works that are reproduced in CD-ROM or DVD format.

Back-to-back rulings by the Second Circuit and now the Eleventh Circuit, favoring the National Geographic Society, will allow magazine and newspaper publishers to market their archived publications in CD-Rom and DVD format without being required to pay royalties to writers and photographers whose work appeared originally in magazine or newspaper format.

Here is the law.com article referenced above (Law.com - Legal News, Legal Technology) and the majority opinion follows ( Jerry Greenberg v. National Geographic Society).