Bit Parts

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that evidence supported a jury finding that movie producer Maura Flynn was co-author of the documentary, 'Your Mother Kills Animals' (YMKA). Berman v. Johnson, 1:07cv39. The jury decided that Flynn and director Curt Johnson intended to be joint authors of the documentary, and that Flynn made independently copyrightable contributions. After a dispute arose over the angle of the movie's content, Johnson had stopped communicating with Flynn and began marketing the documentary on his own. Flynn's attorney, Michael D. Steger of New York, noted that the 'trial testimony revealed that Johnson and Flynn agreed to co-produce the film, to exercise joint control over its making and to divide profits evenly, but they never put their agreement in writing.' He also said that the district court's ruling 'appears to be a case of first impression in the Eastern District of Virginia.' In its decision, the district court rejected a Ninth Circuit joint-authorship test that requires a joint author to show control over creation of the work. See, Aalmuhammed v. Lee, 202 F.3d 1227 (9th Cir. 2000). Instead, adopting the approach of the Second and Seventh Circuits,
the district court emphasized: 'the Ninth Circuit's rule is susceptible to inequitable manipulation. ' The record reflects that Flynn was contractually entitled to exercise control over YMKA and was only prevented from doing so by Johnson's wrongful conduct. It follows that to apply the Ninth Circuit's rule on these facts would violate the sensibly settled maxim that 'no one should profit by his own conscious wrong.”

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