Folsom v. Marsh
2 Story 100, 9 F. Cas. 342 (1841)
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Rule of Law:
The unauthorized copying of a substantial and qualitatively significant portion of a copyrighted work constitutes infringement, even if the new work has a different purpose and does not copy the original in its entirety.
Facts:
- The plaintiffs held the copyright to a twelve-volume publication, 'The Writings of President Washington,' edited by Jared Sparks, which included many of Washington's letters published for the first time.
- The Reverend Charles W. Upham wrote a two-volume biography, 'Life of Washington,' designed for school libraries.
- Upham's biography incorporated 353 pages of material copied verbatim from Sparks's work.
- Of the copied material, 319 pages consisted of Washington's letters that had been previously unpublished before appearing in Sparks's collection.
- The copied letters constituted more than one-third of Upham's entire two-volume work and were considered the most valuable and interesting parts of the collection.
Procedural Posture:
- The plaintiffs, as owners of the copyright for 'The Writings of President Washington,' filed a suit in the United States Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts.
- The plaintiffs sought an injunction against the defendants to prevent the publication and sale of their 'Life of Washington,' alleging copyright infringement.
- The court referred the matter to a master to investigate and report on the extent of the copying from the plaintiffs' work.
- The master submitted a report detailing that 353 pages of the defendants' work, including 319 pages of letters, were identical to material in the plaintiffs' work.
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Issue:
Does the selection and verbatim publication of a substantial number of an author's copyrighted letters as part of a new, original biographical work constitute copyright infringement?
Opinions:
Majority - Story, Circuit Justice
Yes, the verbatim publication of a substantial number of copyrighted letters constitutes an infringement. To determine whether a use is an unlawful piracy, one must look not only to the quantity of the material taken but also to its value and the potential for the new work to supersede the objects of the original. The court reasoned that copyright protects the entirety of an author's work, and appropriating its most valuable parts, even for a new purpose, is an infringement if it diminishes the value of the original or injuriously appropriates the author's labor. In this case, the defendants copied the most essential and valuable letters, which formed the core of their new work, thereby directly harming the plaintiffs' property rights. The court established that letters are a proper subject of copyright, belonging to the writer, and rejected the idea that taking parts for a biography or abridgment is automatically permissible, especially when it involves copying entire valuable portions rather than exercising true intellectual labor of condensation.
Analysis:
This case is the genesis of the 'fair use' doctrine in American copyright law. Justice Story's analysis established the foundational framework for determining infringement by looking beyond mere quantity to the qualitative nature of the appropriation. The opinion's focus on the value of the material taken and the economic impact on the original work set a precedent that heavily influenced the development of copyright law for over a century. These core principles were eventually codified in the four statutory fair use factors in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.
