Textbook cases can get complicated. Those complications generally do not arise in association with the manuscript or first edition, but with the subsequent updates and revisions. This is often the result of the original authors being assisted, or superceded, by other contributing authors. Sometimes the credit and acknowledgement of each contribution is not adequately represented.

The Plaintiff, Vogel, was invited by the Defendant, textbook publisher Wolters Kluwer Health dba Lippincott et al, to author one section of the medical textbook “Pathology” in the Second and Third revisions. Plaintiff was not asked to participate in the Fourth revision; however, the Fourth revision includes portions of Plaintiff’s contributions to the preceding revisions. Plaintiff received no attribution for his earlier, iterative contributions; authorship for the Fourth revision has been credited to a completely new author-physician.

The Court of the Middle District of North Carolina granted the Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s claim of false designations of origin on the grounds that “Section 43(a) does not protect the merely communicative aspects of the goods apart from the goods themselves.” Specifically finding that Plaintiff’s interpretation of Dastar is “incorrect,” the Court held that any claims of false authorship attribution must be pursued under copyright law. The copyright claim survives the motion to dismiss and the case will go forward to trial.

Vogel v. Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. (12/30/08)

Crane v. Poetic Products Ltd., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 993 (SDNY January 8, 2009)

Arising from a fondness for the conspiracy theory that the 1978 death of Pope John Paul I was a murder most vile to facilitate a specific succession, both plaintiff and defendant to this action wrote works. Crane wrote a two act play entitled “The Last Confession” and filed a declaratory judgement for a ruling that that play does not infringed copyright claimant, Poetic’s, nonfiction book entitled, “In God’s Name”.

In reviewing the two works, the Southern District of New York held that the play is not substantially similar to the book. The court looked at the elements of both works and found that while the selection, arrangement and organization of the facts constitute protectable copyright in both works, the comparison between the two works revealed that the resulting thin copyright did not extent to the specific historical order of presentation that each used in expressing their thinly protectable copyright. No substantial similarity was found between the two that used different means and devices in expressing the same plot. Crane’s work utilized dialogue and a series of flashbacks while the Poetic work employed historical narrative in chronological order.

The court in granting defendant’s motion for summary judgement, the court instructed the clerk to ‘close the case’.