Center for Gestalt Development, Inc. v. Bowman

Seventh Circuit holds that copyright in compilation does not confer rights to individual works included in that compilation, affirming summary judgment for defendants who published individual article included in plaintiff’s compilation.

The Center for Gestalt Development Inc. brought copyright infringement claims against Charles Bowman and Jean-Marie Robine, asserting that the Center had the copyright and exclusive publication right to an unpublished article by Dr. Frederick Perls, “Psychopathology of Awareness,” and that defendants infringed that right by including the article in their 200-page book, Psychopathology of Awareness: An unfinished and unpublished manuscript with commentaries by contemporary gestalt-therapists. On defendants’ motion, the district court granted summary judgment, finding that before the Center obtained the copyright for the individual article, the defendants had secured an irrevocable license to publish the article from the copyright holders, Dr. Perls’ children. The Seventh Circuit affirmed.

The Seventh Circuit began its analysis by explaining the copyright history of the article. Dr. Perls wrote the article but never published it, and upon his death in 1970, the copyright passed to his wife, Laura Perls. In 1991, Laura’s estate entered into an agreement with the Center that conveyed exclusive rights to publish a collection of Dr. Perls’ unpublished manuscripts, which included the article. The agreement contemplated that writings would be published within a year, but the Center did not publish the collection until three decades later, in 2021.

Dr. Perls’ children inherited the copyright to the article from Laura’s estate in 1995. Approximately two decades later, defendants sought to publish the 40-page article, along with their own written commentary and commentary from other gestalt therapists in what later became their 200-page book. The book, published in France in December 2019 and available for sale in February 2020, listed Dr. Perls as the primary author and defendants as editors. Prior to the publication of the book, the director of the Center contacted defendants, asserting that the Center held the copyright to the article and demanding that they not publish the book. Defendants offered the Center a share of the royalties and credit as co-publisher in exchange for permission to use the article, but the director refused.

Under the threat of litigation from the Center, defendants contacted the children of Dr. Perls in 2019 or 2020, seeking permission to use the article in the book. The siblings granted defendants an irrevocable oral license in exchange for a modest royalty. Thereafter, the Center sued the children of Dr. Perls over the article’s copyright and, in 2021, entered into a settlement agreement through which the siblings assigned their interest in the copyright to the individual article. The Center then sued defendants for infringement.

The Seventh Circuit explained that under the Copyright Act, the 1991 agreement between the Center and Laura granted the Center rights only in the collection of Dr. Perls’ unpublished manuscripts, and not in the article itself. The Center held a copyright in what made the collection of Dr. Perls’ unpublished manuscripts original (i.e., its selection of certain of Dr. Perls’ writings) rather than what made the individual article original. Therefore, the Center could not prevail on an infringement claim against anyone who copied the article alone; it could prevail on an infringement claim only with respect to the entire collection.

The appellate court noted that this changed in 2021, when the Center acquired the copyright for the article as part of its settlement agreement with Dr. Perls’ children. However, by that time the defendants had obtained the irrevocable license from the then-holders of the copyright, the Perls siblings, to use the article as part of their book. When the Center acquired the copyright in the article, it did so subject to a limitation on its otherwise exclusive right to publish the article and to sue those who infringed on its copyright.

For these reasons, the Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of defendants.