trict court determined, with little analysis, that a television station had taken an overt act manifesting its intent to abandon copyright in its news broadcasts when it regularly destroyed its own copies of the broadcasts a week after they had aired.[1] An appellate court declared it “questionable whether [the station] had such an intent,”[2] but ultimately deferred to the trial court’s finding.[3] The appellate court’s decision in Duncan adds little to an understanding of copyright abandonment, however, in light of its focus on the remedies ordered by the trial court and on the First Amendment issues implicated in the case.[4] In Rouse v. Walter & Associates,[5] authors of software repeatedly referred to their employer as the holder of copyright. The court suggested that the plaintiffs’ repeated disclaimers of their own copyright interests were tantamount to an abandonment of copyright.[6] The court’s statements regarding the question of abandonment, however, were mere dicta, for it had already concluded that the plaintiffs’ employer was the true owner of the program under the work made for hire doctrine.[7]
After excluding the cases where “abandonment” represents a mere proxy for noncompliance with formalities or where the concept is invoked merely to add weight to decisions resting on other grounds, there remains a very small number of reported decisions in which the question of copyright abandonment was both squarely raised and case-dispositive. In Hadady Corp. v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc.,[8] a copyright holder published a work with a notice that expressly limited the term of copyright in the work to two days.[9] A district court held that the notice was tantamount to an abandonment of copyright in the work at the expiration of the two-day period.[10] In Oravec v. Sunny Isles Luxury Ventures,[11] an architect signed a letter indicating that he “reserved no patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret or other intellectual property rights” in an architectural design.[12] Although the architect later sought to clarify that he believed the letter waived copyright protection only as against its recipient,[13] a district court held that the letter “clearly and unambiguously manifested his intent to abandon any copyright protection” over the accompanying work.[14]
- ↑ 572 F. Supp. at 1196.
- ↑ 744 F.2d at 1500.
- ↑ See id.
- ↑ See id. at 1498–1500.
- ↑ 513 F. Supp. 2d 1041 (S.D. Iowa 2007).
- ↑ See id. at 1069–70.
- ↑ See id. at 1055–65; see also 17 U.S.C. § 201(b) (2006).
- ↑ 739 F. Supp. 1392 (C.D. Cal. 1990).
- ↑ See id. at 1396 (“ ‘The information contained in this letter is protected by U.S. copyright laws though noon EST on the 2d day after its release[.]’ ”) .
- ↑ See id. at 1399.
- ↑ 469 F. Supp. 2d 1148 (S.D. Fla. 2006).
- ↑ Id. at 1154.
- ↑ See id.
- ↑ Id. at 1178.
