Wheaton v. Peters
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Wheaton v. Peters'', 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591 (1834), was the first
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
ruling on
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
. The case upheld the power of Congress to make a grant of copyright protection subject to conditions and rejected the doctrine of a
common law copyright Common law copyright is the legal doctrine that grants copyright protection based on common law of various jurisdictions, rather than through protection of statutory law. In part, it is based on the contention that copyright is a natural right an ...
in published works. The Court also declared that there could be no copyright in the Court's own judicial decisions.


Facts

The case arose out of the printing of the Supreme Court's own opinions.
Henry Wheaton Henry Wheaton (November 27, 1785 – March 11, 1848) was a United States lawyer, jurist and diplomat. He was the third Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, reporter of decisions for the United States Supreme Court, the ...
, the third
reporter of decisions The Reporter of Decisions (sometimes known by other titles, such as Official Reporter or State Reporter) is the official responsible for publishing the decisions of a court. Traditionally, the decisions were published in books known as case repor ...
, had compiled the opinions of the Court, complete with annotations and summaries of the arguments in Court. This was useful material but made the volumes of his reports costly and out of the reach of most lawyers. His successor as reporter, Richard Peters, in addition to publishing the current volumes of reports, had gone over his predecessor's work, eliminating the arguments of counsel and other material beyond the opinions themselves, and published an abridged edition reducing twenty-four volumes into six. The Reporter's salary of $1,000 per year did not cover the full expenses of preparing the reports, and the Reporters relied on sales of their books to recoup their costs. By creating more affordable volumes, Peters devastated the market for Wheaton's more expensive ones. Wheaton sued Peters in
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
and lost in the circuit court. The judge, Joseph Hopkinson, ruled that copyright is purely the creation of statute and that one must comply with the formal requirements for copyright, such as registering the copyright and placing a copyright notice in the work, in order to receive protection. Judge Hopkinson also ruled that there was no
federal common law Federal common law is a term of United States law used to describe common law that is developed by the federal courts, instead of by the courts of the various states. The United States is the only country to combine the creation of common law do ...
, that one must look to the states for
common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...
and, even then, that the states did not necessarily adopt the entire
English common law English law is the common law legal system of England and Wales, comprising mainly criminal law and civil law, each branch having its own courts and procedures. Principal elements of English law Although the common law has, historically, bee ...
— assuming there was a
common law copyright Common law copyright is the legal doctrine that grants copyright protection based on common law of various jurisdictions, rather than through protection of statutory law. In part, it is based on the contention that copyright is a natural right an ...
. Wheaton appealed to the Supreme Court.


Result

Justice
John McLean John McLean (March 11, 1785 – April 4, 1861) was an American jurist and politician who served in the United States Congress, as U.S. Postmaster General, and as a justice of the Ohio and U.S. Supreme Courts. He was often discussed for ...
, who himself had publishing experience as the founder of an Ohio newspaper, wrote the opinion of the Court. The Court ruled that while the common law protected copyright in unpublished writings (such as diaries or personal letters), "this is a very different right from that which asserts a perpetual and exclusive property in the future publication of the work, after the author shall have published it to the world." McLean declared that post-publication copyright did not exist in the United States, but only as a function of statute. "Congress, then, by this act, instead of sanctioning an existing right, as contended, created it." McLean also rejected Wheaton's contention that requiring registration and the deposit of a copy of the copyrighted work with the Department of State were improper prerequisites to copyright protection. Because Congress was granting authors the protection of copyright, it could require them to observe the statutory formalities. This precedent corresponded to the English decision in ''
Donaldson v Beckett ''Donaldson v Becket'' (1774) 2 Brown's Parl. Cases (2d ed.) 129, 1 Eng. Rep. 837; 4 Burr. 2408, 98 Eng. Rep. 257; 17 Cobbett's Parl. Hist. 953 is the ruling by the British House of Lords that held that copyright in published works was not perpe ...
'', which was cited in the Court's opinion. The Court remanded the case to the circuit court to determine whether Wheaton had satisfied the requirements for copyright protection. Finally, in an often-quoted sentence, the opinion concluded: "It may be proper to remark that the Court is unanimously of opinion that no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions delivered by this Court, and that the judges thereof cannot confer on any reporter any such right." Thus, any copyright protection for published judicial opinions could cover ancillary materials such as summaries of the opinions and commentaries on them, but not the judicially authored texts of the opinions themselves.


Dissents

Justice
Smith Thompson Smith Thompson (January 17, 1768 – December 18, 1843) was a US Secretary of the Navy from 1819 to 1823 and a US Supreme Court Associate Justice from 1823 to his death. Early life and the law Born in Amenia, New York, Thompson graduated ...
wrote a dissenting opinion, in which he concluded that Wheaton was entitled to an injunction against Peters' publication of his reports. Justice Henry Baldwin also dissented, but his reasoning was not recorded in the original opinion. It appeared in a revised edition of the U.S. Reports, published posthumously in 1884.


Later developments


Case resolution

As the Supreme Court had directed, the Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held a trial on the issue of whether Wheaton had satisfied the copyright formalities. The court ruled that he had. Peters appealed, but while the second appeal was pending, both Wheaton and Peters died. The case was then settled, with Peters' estate paying Wheaton's estate $400.


Legal history

''Wheaton v. Peters'' was the first in a line of cases in which the Supreme Court has traditionally tried to prevent people from being able to monopolize information using copyright law, especially text of the laws that govern everyone. The decision was upheld and expanded to all judicial opinions in '' Banks v. Manchester'', although '' Callaghan v. Myers'' established that editorial additions to the materials could be restricted by copyright.


See also

*
Copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
*
History of copyright The history of copyright starts with early privileges and monopolies granted to printers of books. The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or pur ...
*
List of leading legal cases in copyright law The following is a list of cases that deal with issues of concern to copyright in various jurisdictions. Some of these cases are leading English cases as the law of copyright in various Commonwealth jurisdictions developed out of English law while ...
*
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 33 This is a list of cases reported in volume 33 (8 Pet.) of '' United States Reports'', decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1834. Nominative reports In 1874, the U.S. government created the ''United States Reports'', and re ...


References


Further reading

* * * * *


External links

* * {{USCopyrightActs 1834 in United States case law United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Marshall Court United States copyright case law History of copyright law