Fox Film Corporation v. Knowles/Opinion of the Court

by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

United States Supreme Court

261 U.S. 326

Fox Film Corporation  v.  Knowles

 Argued: Feb. 27, 1923. --- Decided: March 12, 1923

These are bills in equity brought by the petitioner to restrain dramatic performances based upon two poems, 'Over the Hills to the Poor House' and 'Over the Hills from the Poor House,' and for an account and damages. The author of the poems, Will Carlton, held a renewed copyright for them which expired on or about February 21, 1915. He died on December 18, 1912, testate, leaving all his property to Norman E. Goodrich and appointing him sole executor. On January 21, 1915, the executor applied for and obtained a renewal of the copyright to February 21, 1929. Later the exclusive right to dramatize the poems was assigned to the plaintiff. The only defense relied upon here is that the statutes did not give the executor a right of renewal and that therefore the copyright has expired. The bills were dismissed upon this ground by the District Court, (No. 310) 274 Fed. 731; (No. 311) 275 Fed. 582; and the decrees were affirmed on the authority of Silverman v. Sunrise Pictures Corporation, 273 Fed. 909, 19 A. L. R. 289, by the Circuit Court of Appeals. 279 Fed. 1018.

This copyright was subsisting when the Copyright Act of March 4, 1909, c. 320, 35 Stat. 1075 (Comp. St. § 9517 et seq.), went into effect. By section 24 of that statute (Comp. St. § 9545) copyrights so subsisting 'may, at the expiration of the term provided for under existing law, be renewed and extended by the author of such work if still living, or the widow, widower, or children of the author, if the author be not living, or if such author, widow, widower, or children be not living, then by the author's executors, or in the absence of a will, his next of kin, for a further period such that the entire term shall be equal to that secured by this Act, including the renewal period: * * * Provided, that application for such renewal and extension shall be made to the copyright office and duly registered therein within one year prior to the expiration of the existing term.' The argument on which the statute was held not to apply to the present case was that the renewal creates a new estate, White-Smith Music Pub. Co. v. Goff, 187 Fed. 247, 109 C. C. A. 187; that the estate is purely statutory, and does not exist until within one year prior to the expiring of the existing term; that therefore Carlton dying more than a year before that moment had nothing to bequeath; and that the statute gave nothing to the executor except when the testator had the right to renew at the moment of his decease. It is argued that the executor is mentioned only to provide for the case of the testator's dying within the year without having exercised his right to renew, and thus having a right that the statute allowed him to transmit.

All of these propositions may be admitted, (for the purposes of the present argument only,) except the last. But we see no sufficient reason for thus limiting the right of the executor. The section read as a whole would express to the ordinary reader a general intent to secure the continuance of the copyright after the author's death, and none the less so if the actual continuance was effected by creating a new estate, or if the beneficiaries in certain cases are pointed out. No one doubts that if Carlton had died leaving a widow she could have applied as the executor did, and executors are mentioned alongside of the widow with no suggestion in the statute that when executors are the proper persons, if anyone, to make the claim, they cannot make it whenever a widow might have made it. The next of kin come after the executors. Surely they again have the same rights that the widow would have had. The limitation is derived from a theory that the statute cannot have intended the executor to take unless he took what the testator already had. We should not have derived that notion from the section, which seems to us to have the broad intent that we have expressed, and the words specially applicable seem to us plainly to import that if there is no widow or child the executor may exercise the power that the testator might have exercised if he had been alive. The executor represents the person of his testator, Littleton, § 237, and it is no novelty for him to be given rights that the testator could not have exercised while he lived. Green v. Ekins, 2 Atk. 473, 476. A familiar illustration is to be found in the Employers' Liability Act (Comp. St. §§ 8657-8665) which gives to personal representatives a new cause of action for causing death, although the foundation is the original wrongful injury to the deceased. Michigan Central R. Co. v. Vreeland, 227 U.S. 59, 68, 70, 33 Sup. Ct. 192, 57 L. Ed. 417, Ann. Cas. 1914C, 176.

Decrees reversed.

Notes