Caseflicks

Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit • 1979

Mitchell Brothers Film Group and Jartech, Inc. v. Cinema Adult Theater, A/K/A Cinema 69

604 F.2d 852 | 50 A.L.R. Fed. 786 | 1979 U.S. App. LEXIS 11167

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that alleged obscenity does not strip an otherwise valid work of copyright protection or furnish an unclean-hands defense to infringement.

Background

Mitchell Brothers Film Group and Jartech owned a properly registered copyright, under the Copyright Act of 1909, in the motion picture Behind the Green Door. Two groups of defendants obtained and exhibited copies without permission. One theater group defaulted, and the district court entered judgment and awarded statutory damages against it.

The Cinema Adult Theater group appeared and defended the infringement action by arguing that the film was obscene. After viewing the film, the district court held it obscene and concluded that the copyright owners came to court with unclean hands. It therefore denied them relief. The Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that obscenity was not a defense to infringement and declining to decide whether the movie was in fact obscene.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Copyright Act of 1909 excluded obscene works from copyright protection.

Holding

No. The 1909 Act protected all otherwise copyrightable writings and contained no express or implied obscenity exception.

Reasoning

Section 4 of the 1909 Act extended copyright protection to “all the writings of an author.” Motion pictures plainly qualified as writings, and nothing in that broad language suggested that a work ceased to be copyrightable because its content was obscene.

The statutory history supported this reading. Congress had rarely imposed content-based limits on copyright, and when earlier statutes arguably contained such restrictions, Congress later removed them. By contrast, Congress expressly imposed content-related restrictions in patent and trademark law, showing that it knew how to enact such limits when it chose to do so.

Congress reasonably could conclude that copyright should not turn on official judgments about artistic, social, or moral worth. Courts are poorly positioned to sort valuable expression from worthless expression, especially because public attitudes and assessments of artistic value change substantially over time.

An obscenity exception would also create serious practical and constitutional difficulties. Obscenity may depend on local community standards, while copyright is a nationally uniform system. Congress's decision not to build that unstable, locality-dependent inquiry into copyright law was therefore sensible.

Accordingly, all creative works that otherwise satisfy the Act's requirements may receive copyright protection regardless of whether they are alleged to be obscene. The court did not need to decide whether Behind the Green Door was obscene.

Issue #2

Whether Congress constitutionally could provide copyright protection for works that may be obscene or otherwise lack utility.

Holding

Yes. An all-inclusive copyright statute is a constitutionally permissible means of promoting the progress of science and useful arts.

Reasoning

The Copyright and Patent Clause directs Congress to promote the progress of science and useful arts; it does not require Congress to prove that every individual copyrighted work independently promotes that goal. Within constitutional limits, Congress may select the means that it reasonably believes will best advance the Clause's purposes.

Under the deferential necessary-and-proper standard, Congress could reasonably decide that protecting all writings best encourages creative production. Refusing protection to controversial or unpopular works would chill authors, publishers, and distributors, while forcing government officials and judges to make uncertain content judgments.

Copyright protection for a particular work does not give its owner a right to suppress the ideas contained in that work. This distinguishes copyright from patent law, where the exclusive right can more directly block use of an invention and where Congress may demand a showing of utility.

The court therefore held that Congress did not exceed its constitutional authority by protecting a broad range of expression, including works alleged to be obscene, as part of an overall system designed to foster creativity and dissemination.

Issue #3

Whether alleged obscenity could bar a copyright infringement action through the equitable doctrine of unclean hands.

Holding

No. Unclean hands could not be used to create an obscenity defense to copyright infringement in this case.

Reasoning

Applying obscenity as a defense, whether directly or through the label of unclean hands, would add a limitation Congress did not authorize. It would undermine the copyright system's pro-creativity purpose by requiring authors of controversial works to risk judicial disapproval of their content before obtaining meaningful protection against piracy.

Equitable doctrines generally should not be applied in a way that defeats a federal statute's purposes. A private infringement action serves the public objective of encouraging creative work, so courts should not deny relief merely because they disapprove of the copyright holder's alleged moral conduct.

The ordinary unclean-hands doctrine requires misconduct directly related to the controversy that affects the equitable relationship between the parties. The alleged obscenity of the film neither injured these infringers nor changed the parties' relationship concerning the unauthorized exhibition of the movie.

The district court's reliance on a broad “public injury” theory was misplaced. A general assertion that a work injures the public would permit virtually unlimited collateral attacks on a copyright owner's conduct and would improperly turn ordinary infringement litigation into a forum for unrelated moral or regulatory disputes.

Existing state and federal obscenity laws provide the mechanisms chosen by legislatures to regulate obscene dissemination. Whether additional pressure is needed is a legislative policy judgment, not a matter for courts to impose case by case by withholding copyright remedies.

The court left open that copyright misuse or fraud directly subverting copyright policy might, in an appropriate case, bar relief. But merely creating or distributing an allegedly obscene work was not such misconduct, and the unclean-hands defense failed.