Property I Outline

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International News Service v. Associated Press p. 51
Supreme court of the US 1918

Issue
Whether INS may lawfully be restrained from appropriating news taken from bulletins issued by AP or any of its members, or from newspapers published by them, for the purpose of selling it to INS clients.

Questions considered by court
1. Whether there is any property in news
2. Whether, if there be property in news collected for the purpose of being published, it survives the instant of its publication in the first newspaper to which it is communicated by the new gatherer
3. Whether defendant’s admitted course of conduct in appropriating for commercial use matter taken from bulletins or early editions of AP publications constituted unfair competition in trade

Summary
AP and the defendant INS are competitors in the distribution of news in the US. AP sought a bill to restrain the pirating of their news by defendant.

Procedure
AP filed a bill to restrain INS from pirating APs news in three ways.
From bribing AP employees for news
By inducing AP members to violate its by-laws and permit defendant to obtain news before publication
By copying news from bulletins and from early editions of APs newspapers and then selling it
The district court granted preliminary injunction under the first and second heads. And went into deliberation on the third point of the bill.

Holding
Held that APs news amounted to some sort of quasi property that was protected from INS using it as their own. The reasoning was that even though when AP published its news to the public any individual who buys a newspaper can transfer that information to others because news belongs to everyone. But in the case between two competitors in the field of distributing news for profit this is not the case.

Coach Notes
Copyright law did not apply in this case because, because the news is open to everyone (there should be a direct explanation of this near the top of page 53)
Property law wouldn’t work because, AP does not have a property right for its news visa vi the public
Quasi property is this concept that he court comes up with because it wants to reach a certain result in the case. It is never used again in any other case
Property is a legal conclusion because we as a society think this thing needs to be protected
The defendant can sell the information for less because they don’t have to put in the initial cost of gathering the information. This is a concern that could make distributing the news unprofitable.
Court doesn’t say much in its opinion just that its unfair competition and that it doesn’t like INS being able to do this
This case has not really been extended throughout the decades and wont really apply to modern cases
This case hasn’t technically been overruled
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Cheney Brothers v. Doris Silk Corp. p 55
United states court of Appeals second circuit 1929

Summary
The plaintiff is a manufacturer of silks, which puts out each season many new patterns, most of which fail to attract customers, and even those that due draw consumers have short life spans. Because of the nature of this business it is not possible to get patents for all the designs or even now which ones would be successful. Taking advantage of this situation the defendant copied one of the designs and sold it at a cheaper price.

Holding
The bill was dismissed I think because you are allowed to imitate

Smith v. Chanel
The court held that a perfume company could claim in advertisements that its product was the equiv