Copyright Litigation: Defamation Claim Based on Copyright Registration Filing Survives Summary Judgment

In Morris v. Atchity, 2010 WL 4181452 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 15, 2010), the court declined to grant a summary judgment motion dismissing a claim for defamation based on statements made in a copyright registration.   This is an unusual claim, but the decision does not explain what the allegedly defamatory statement made was.

Any slander of title-type of claim would appear to be preempted by the Copyright Act:  anyone can file a competing claim, this is the point of the copyright registration process.   I didn't dig into the docket sheet to figure out what possible statement might be defamatory.

In Morris v. Atchity, Plaintiff Margaret Morris alleged that her work "Jesus Augustus: From Imperial Cult to Christianity" was infringed by a novel based on the work "The Ashes of Christ/The August God".

Plaintiff alleged that she submitted the work to defendant and had an implied contract.   The court declined summary judgment on the implied contract, finding that material questions of fact precluded a dismissal based on preemption.

Defendants argued that the works share only a similar historical theory.   In denying the motion, the court found that "reasonable minds might differ as to whether there are substantial similarities between the two works with respect to the protected expression of ideas contained in Plaintiff's literary work."

Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

International Law: Wrestling the Dead Hand of History - Panel on Nazi Looted Art

Alfred Flechtheim portrait 1910 by Jacob Hilsdorf

Courtesy Wikipedia

Professor Jen Kreder announced on the Intlawgrrls blog her panel this coming Friday March 26 in Washington DC at the American Society of International Law.

The panel, called "Wrestling the Dead Hand of History: Perspectives on a Proposed State Department Commission on Nazi Looted Art," and features Jen Kreder with Ambassadors Kennedy and Eizenstat, Dr. Lucille A. Roussin (left) of Cardozo School of Law, and New York-based attorney Charles A. Goldstein.

I support the US State Department's proposal to set up a U.S. Commission to return artworks in US museums that were stolen from Jews and never returned.

If the US doesn't take this measure and force our museums to start telling the truth about where the art in their collections come from, we can hardly expect other countries such as Russia, Poland and Austria to return all of the arts stolen from Jews by the Nazis.

I will be attending the panel. Jen is launching a special interest group of the American Society of International Law  on the International Law of Cultural Heritage & the Arts.

Above at top is a photograph of Alfred Flechtheim, the leading contemporary art dealer in the Weimar Republic and reviled in Nazi propaganda as the "Artjew Flechtheim".   You will find practically nothing written about Flechtheim in the English language - the U.S. museums who have the artworks stolen from his Berlin and Dusseldorf galleries would like to write Flechtheim out of history.  Below, Flechtheim's portrait by Otto Dix.  Dix's style shown below was known as "Neue Sachtlicheit" (New Objectivity).

Alfred Flechtheim the Art Dealer - Otto Dix 1926