cases | Marc D. Ostrow, Esq.

In its June 29 opinion in 16 Casa Duse, LLC v. Merkin, the Second Circuit, citing the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision in Garcia v. Google, held that a director does not have an independent copyrightable interest in a motion picture. In addition to affirming the District Court’s granting of summary judgment in favor of plaintiff producer, the Court’s 40-page decision also affirmed the plaintiff’s award of costs and attorney’s fees.

Plaintiff’s principal, Robert Krakovski, is the producer of a short film called Head’s Up. Krakovski purchased the film rights from the author of the underlying work and asked defendant, Alex Merkin, to direct the film for a fee of $1500.

Krakovski then proceeded to do what producers do: he assembled the film’s crew of about 30 people, including additional producers, cameramen, technicians and actors. He made all final hiring decisions. All personnel except Merkin entered into written work-for-hire agreements which stated that plaintiff would own and control all of the results of their collective efforts, including the worldwide copyrights to the film.

Krakovski clearly intended that Merkin sign a similar work-for-hire agreement while Merkin balked at this by refusing to respond to Krakovski’s emails. Meanwhile, Krakovski moved forward with the production, including scheduling, and scouting locations. Krakovski was still trying to get Merkin to sign an agreement a week before shooting was to commence. Despite the lack of a written agreement, Merkin directed the three days of shooting for the film.

Thereafter, with the main work-for-hire agreement still not signed, Krakovski asked Merkin to edit the film and the parties, sometimes directly and sometimes through Merkin’s lawyer, Reichman, attempted to negotiate a “media agreement,” which would have included the work-for-hire language. Krakovski provided Merkin with a hard drive of a rough cut of the film for Merkin to edit — despite their being no finalized agreement.

Notwithstanding his concession that Krakovski owned the rights to the screenplay, Merkin asserted that he owned the rights to the “rough cut” of the film and that Krakovski could not use Merkin’s work in the final film without his permission. While the dispute continued, Merkin registered a copyright in the “raw footage for the film Head’s Up” without informing Krakovski and listing himself as the sole author.

Krakovski submitted the film to various festivals and scheduled a private screening in New York City, which was to be followed by dinner at a nearby restaurant which he reserved with a non-refundable deposit. However, Merkin crashed the party with a purported “cease and desist” notice to the screening venue, which made the venue cancel the screening, which, in turn made Krakovski lose his deposit with the restaurant. The lawsuit followed.

Plaintiff sought a judgment declaring: a) that plaintiff did not infringe defendants’ copyright; b) that defendants owned no copyright interest in the film; and (c) that Merkin’s copyright registration was invalid. Plaintiff also asserted state-law claims for tortious interference as well as attorney’s fees under both Section 505 of the Copyright Act and 28 U.S.C. § 1927. Defendants asserted various claims, including a judgment that a director of a film is an “author” for purposes of copyright.

The District Court granted summary judgment to plaintiff on all claims and assessed attorney’s fees against Merkin and sanctions against his attorney, Reichman. After some additional motions and submissions, the District Court entered a final order assessing damages from the canceled screening event in the amount of $1,956.58 and costs and attorney’s fees of $185,579.65, $175,634 of which Merkin and Reichman would have joint and several liability, with the remaining $9,945.65 assessed solely against Reichman. Merkin and Reichman appealed.

The Second Circuit framed this issue as follows:

This case requires us to answer a question of first impression in this Circuit: May a contributor to a creative work whose contributions are inseparable from, and integrated into, the work maintain a copyright interest in his or her contributions alone? We conclude that, at least on the facts of the present case, he or she may not.

Turning to the copyright claims, the Court first stated that the parties agree that they are not “joint authors” under §101 of the Copyright Act as joint authorship requires the intent of the parties to create a merged, unitary whole and such intent was clearly lacking. A finding of joint authorship (which would include one of joint ownership since the copyright would vest in the film’s authors) would preclude any claims of either infringement or tortious interference since you can’t infringe (or interfere with) your own work against your co-owner. The parties also agreed that Merkin’s efforts cannot be deemed a work-for-hire as he never signed a written agreement to that effect as required by statute.

Having disposed of the copyright preliminaries, the Court then turned to the key issue as to whether Merkin’s contributions to the film could be separately copyrightable:

We have never decided whether an individualʹs non‐de minimis creative contributions to a work in which copyright protection subsists, such as a film, fall within the subject matter of copyright, when the contributions are inseparable from the work and the individual is neither the sole nor a joint author of the work and is not a party to a work‐for‐ hire arrangement. We answer that question in the negative on the facts of the present case, finding that the Copyright Actʹs terms, structure, and history support the conclusion that Merkinʹs contributions to the film do not themselves constitute a ʺwork of authorshipʺ amenable to copyright protection. (citation omitted).

The Court bolstered its conclusion by endorsing the Ninth Circuit’s recent en banc decision Garcia v. Google which reversed Judge Kosinski’s opinion holding that an actor may have a separately copyrightable interest in her performance:

We agree. Filmmaking is a collaborative process typically involving artistic contributions from large numbers of people, including—in addition to producers, directors, and screenwriters—actors, designers, cinematographers, camera operators, and a host of skilled technical contributors. If copyright subsisted separately in each of their contributions to the completed film, the copyright in the film itself, which is recognized by statute as a work of authorship, could be undermined by any number of individual claims.

The Court therefore concluded these contributions are not independent “works of authorship” under the Copyright Act, unlike free-standing, independent original works such as dances or songs that may be incorporated into a film.

Having disposed of Merkin’s claim to copyright in his contribution to the film, the Court then turned to his claim to own the copyright in the raw footage from which the final film was to be fashioned. Since the parties are not “joint authors,” the analysis then turned to which party was the “dominant author” of the film.

The Second Circuit agreed with the District Court that notwithstanding Merkin’s significant contributions (e.g., camera work, lighting, blocking, actor’s delivery of lines, wardrobe, etc.), Casa Duse “exercised far more decision making authority” particularly with respect to its “agreements with outsiders” noting that plaintiff executed all relevant third-party agreements for the production. As dominant author, the Court concluded that plaintiff owns the copyright in the finished film — as well as the underlying raw footage.

The Court did throw Merkin a bone, finding that he did not engage in tortious interference with business relations under New York law. Finally, the Court upheld the joint and several liability for costs and attorney’s fees against Merkin and Reichman. First the Court noted that even though plaintiff did not file the copyright registration in issue and sought a declaration of non-infringement (as opposed to seeking damages for copyright infringement), attorney’s fees were nonetheless available under §505 of the Copyright Act. And the joint and several liability was appropriate under 28 U.S.C. §1927.

The holdings of both this case and the Ninth Circuit’s Garcia decision that inseparable, integrated contributions to a motion picture are not independently copyrightable will probably have somewhat limited application as actors, directors and other contributors routinely sign work-for-hire agreements. And the Second Circuit took pains to limit its holding to the particular facts presented. It will be interesting to see how these holdings may be applied to other collaborative efforts, such as creating and recording popular songs, although work-for-hire agreements are commonplace there as well. As for disputes between “collaborators” who are clearly not joint authors, the Second Circuit’s guidance (even absent a specific test) as to who is a “dominant author” and therefore the owner of the copyright in the work, should be helpful.

On May 18, BMI’s “Rate Court” judge, Louis L. Stanton of the Southern District of New York, ruled in BMI’s favor in its rate dispute with Pandora. However, it wasn’t until May 28 that Judge Stanton’s 60-page opinion was made public. As my former colleague, BMI’s CEO, Mike O’Neill, reminded me at the BMI Student Composer Awards on May 18, Rate Court opinions are not made public for several days until confidential information is redacted. Mike was fairly giddy that evening given that Judge Stanton gave BMI a slam dunk in finding that the rate BMI sought, 2.5% of Pandora’s revenue, was reasonable. This was particularly good news for songwriters and music publishers as well since Pandora was the clear winner in its prior Rate Court dispute with ASCAP.

BMI and ASCAP are music performing rights organizations (PROs) and both operate under decades-old Consent Decrees which are currently being reviewed by the Justice Department. Both decrees contain a provision that if either ASCAP or BMI and a licensee can’t agree upon a rate, either party can submit the dispute to their respective “Rate Court” for a determination of a “reasonable” rate, in each case a district judge in the Southern District of New York. BMI’s Rate Court Judge is Judge Stanton and ASCAP’s is Denise Cote.

Because BMI and ASCAP are heavily regulated, a Rate Court’s determination of a “reasonable” rate under the relevant Consent Decree (i.e., what a willing seller and buyer would negotiate in an arm’s length transaction) usually requires referring to one or more “benchmarks,” which as Judge Stanton explained, are “the rates set in (or adjusted from) contemporaneous similar transactions.” BMI and Pandora bitterly argued over what the appropriate benchmark(s) should be for Pandora’s internet streaming service.

The PROs’ publisher members, particularly the majors (Universal, Warner-Chappell and Sony/ATV (which now controls the EMI catalog)), felt they could negotiate better deals for digital (Internet) rights themselves than through ASCAP and BMI because of the Consent Decree restrictions. So the majors undertook a “partial withdrawal” of their grant to ASCAP and BMI to license public performances of their music to Internet streaming services, allowing the PROs to continue licensing the publishers’ works for all other purposes.

This partial withdrawal was itself the subject of Rate Court litigation, with both Judge Stanton and Judge Cote eventually ruling, albeit with slightly different rationales, that publishers could not partially withdraw their grants to ASCAP and BMI, respectively. In other words, they were either “all in” or “all out” at ASCAP and BMI and the partial withdrawals were invalid.

However, between March 2012 and December 2013 (before the Rate Courts said such deals were verboten), the major publishers entered into a series of separate deals with Pandora, with rates ranging from 2.25% to 5.85% of Pandora’s revenue. BMI also submitted as benchmarks, agreements with Pandora’s competitors, entered into between 2010 and 2013, with rates ranging between 2.5% and 4.6% of the service’s revenue. Pandora disputed not only the validity of the interregnum partial withdrawal agreements but also the agreements of its “competitors” as appropriate benchmarks.

As for the agreements made during the period of partial withdrawals, Pandora claimed they were not, in fact, arms-length negotiations, but rates that the PROs extracted under threat of infringement litigation. As for the other agreements, Pandora claimed its service was different from its competitors, and more like traditional over-the-air radio, which has a rate of 1.75% of revenues, which was also the rate for Pandora’s prior BMI license. The foregoing is very much an over-simplified distillation of more the more than 30 pages of factual background in the Court’s opinion.

After the lengthy recitation, including quoting various email exchanges, the Court began its discussion with a concise statement of its conclusion:

The evidence presented at trial shows that BMI’s proposed license fee of 2.5% of Pandora’s gross revenue is reasonable, and indeed at the low end of the range of recent licenses. The direct licenses between Pandora and Sony and UMPG [Universal] for the 2014 calendar year are the best benchmarks because they are the most recent indices of competitive market rates.

Shortly after this, Judge Stanton quotes verbatim an email chain which consists of several single-spaced pages of internal discussion among Pandora’s executives (leaving one to wonder what was actually redacted from the Court’s public opinion), in support of its conclusion that Pandora’s deals with the publishers were, in fact, market rate negotiations: “Once the rate negotiations were freed from the overhanging control of the rate courts, the free-market licenses reflect sharply increased rates.”

The Court then went on to distinguish how Pandora is not just different from traditional radio, but also from other online streaming services: “

The fact (not unusual when traditional business models are evolving and shifting) is that Pandora cannot be accurately characterized as in any specific category for which rates have been established. It has aspects of several, but it is not confined to any one in particular.

As for radio, even considering Pandora’s purchase of a traditional radio station, Judge Stanton concluded:

Pandora is not similarly situated to any RMLC [Radio Music Licensing Committee] licensee, including iHeartMedia. The rate for the ten thousand terrestrial broadcasting members of the RMLC is not a useful benchmark for Pandora.

Both ASCAP and BMI, in their respective Rate Court cases, relied upon the testimony of Peter Brodsky, Sony’s EVP and in-house counsel, to demonstrate the arm-length nature of the negotiations he had with Pandora’s attorney, Robert Rosenblum, during the “partial withdrawal” period. Judge Cote specifically found that Brodsky‘s testimony wasn’t credible. Judge Stanton took great pains set forth the specifics of these negotiations in his concluding that “I do not find Brodsky’s credibility impaired.”

Similarly, in rejecting Judge Cote’s conclusion in the ASCAP proceeding that the rates produced in the Pandora-publisher negotiations were not proper benchmarks because of the fear of “crippling copyright infringement liability, Judge Stanton stated that the record before him, many months after the closing of the record in the ASCAP case, “is far more extensive that what Judge Cote had before her.”

As with Judge Cote’s decision, Judge Stanton’s decision will likely be appealed. If, as with Judge Cote’s ASCAP decision, Judge Stanton’s BMI decision is affirmed, it will be a significant victory for the publishers of the songs streamed on Pandora, although the publishers still get a fraction of what the labels, who are not subject to Consent Decrees, get paid by streaming services. And Pandora can still take solace in its ASCAP win.

The conflicting decisions reached by the ASCAP and BMI Rate Courts regarding Pandora are another example of why the Copyright Office, in its Music Licensing Report, recommended that rate-setting for PROs and their licensees should be removed from a single life-tenured federal district judge and instead be given to the Copyright Royalty Board, with its panel of specialized judges who each serve for a limited term. While that won’t eliminate results that some may not like, at least there will be consistency in the decision-making.