ITAR-TASS RUSSIAN NEWS AGENCY, et al. v. RUSSIAN KURIER, INC., et al.
153 F.3d 82 (1998)
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Rule of Law:
In an international copyright dispute, the law of the work's country of origin determines copyright ownership, while the law of the country where the alleged infringement occurred governs the infringement claim. Under Russian law, newspaper publishers hold a copyright only in the creative elements of their compilation, not in the text of individual articles, the rights to which are retained by the journalist-authors.
Facts:
- Russian Kurier, Inc., run by Oleg Pogrebnoy, published a Russian-language weekly newspaper in New York City called 'Kurier'.
- The plaintiffs were various Russian news organizations, including newspapers like Moskowskie Novosti, a news agency called Itar-Tass, and the Union of Journalists of Russia.
- Kurier copied approximately 500 articles that had first been published in the plaintiffs' various Russian publications.
- The copying was done by physically cutting articles, including text, headlines, and graphics, out of the plaintiffs' publications, pasting them onto layout sheets, and photo-reproducing them for printing in Kurier.
- Kurier did not seek or obtain permission from any of the plaintiff publications or the individual authors of the articles before reprinting them.
- The articles at issue were all written by Russian journalists and first published in Russia.
Procedural Posture:
- Itar-Tass and other Russian news organizations sued Russian Kurier, Inc. and Oleg Pogrebnoy in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging copyright infringement.
- The District Court granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the defendants from copying the plaintiffs' works.
- After a trial featuring conflicting expert testimony on Russian law, the District Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
- The District Court entered a judgment enjoining the defendants from further copying and awarded the plaintiffs over $500,000 in damages.
- The defendants, Russian Kurier, Inc. and Oleg Pogrebnoy, appealed the judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
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Issue:
Does Russian copyright law grant newspaper publishers an exclusive copyright interest in the text of individual articles written by their employees, thereby giving them standing to sue for infringement in the United States?
Opinions:
Majority - Newman
No. Russian law vests the exclusive copyright to individual newspaper articles in the journalists who authored them, not in the newspaper publishers, which only own a copyright in the compilation. The court established a two-part choice-of-law framework for international copyright cases. First, issues of copyright ownership are determined by the law of the country with the 'most significant relationship' to the work, which is typically the 'country of origin.' Since the works were created by Russian nationals and published in Russia, Russian law governs ownership. Second, issues of infringement are determined by the law of the place where the infringement occurred (lex loci delicti). Since the copying occurred in New York, United States law governs the infringement claim. Applying this framework, the court analyzed the 1993 Russian Copyright Law. It found that Article 14, the Russian 'work-for-hire' provision, explicitly excludes newspapers, meaning publishers do not automatically acquire their employees' copyrights. Article 11 grants publishers a copyright in their 'compilation'—the creative selection and arrangement of materials—but expressly reserves to the authors of individual articles the 'exclusive rights to exploit their works.' Therefore, the Russian newspaper plaintiffs do not own the copyrights to the text of the individual articles and lack standing to sue for their infringement. The court affirmed the judgment for Itar-Tass, as news agencies are not excluded from Russia's work-for-hire doctrine, but reversed the judgment for the newspaper plaintiffs regarding the text of the articles.
Analysis:
This case establishes a foundational choice-of-law framework for international copyright litigation in U.S. courts, bifurcating the analysis between ownership and infringement. The decision clarifies that the Berne Convention's 'national treatment' principle applies to the scope of protection against infringement, not the threshold question of copyright ownership. By requiring courts to apply foreign law to determine ownership, the ruling prevents foreign entities from assuming they have standing based on U.S. concepts like 'work-for-hire.' This precedent has a significant impact on foreign publishers and media companies seeking to enforce their copyrights in the United States, as they must first prove ownership under their home country's laws.
