Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises
1985 United States Supreme Court case / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court decision in which public interest in learning about a historical figure's impressions of a historic event was held not to be sufficient to show fair use of material otherwise protected by copyright.[1] Defendant, The Nation, had summarized and quoted substantially from A Time to Heal, President Gerald Ford's forthcoming memoir of his decision to pardon former president Richard Nixon. When Harper & Row, who held the rights to A Time to Heal, brought suit, The Nation asserted that its use of the book was protected under the doctrine of fair use, because of the great public interest in a historical figure's account of a historic incident. The Court rejected this argument holding that the right of first publication was important enough to find in favor of Harper.
Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises | |
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Argued November 6, 1984 Decided May 20, 1985 | |
Full case name | Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., et al. v. Nation Enterprises, et al. |
Citations | 471 U.S. 539 (more) 105 S. Ct. 2218; 85 L. Ed. 2d 588; 1985 U.S. LEXIS 17; 53 U.S.L.W. 4562; 225 U.S.P.Q. (BNA) 1073; 11 Media L. Rep. 1969 |
Case history | |
Prior | Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit |
Holding | |
Fair use is not a defense to the pre-publication, commercial appropriation of work by a famous political figure simply because of the public interest in learning of that political figure's account of a historic event. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | O'Connor, joined by Burger, Blackmun, Powell, Rehnquist, Stevens |
Dissent | Brennan, joined by White, Marshall |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend. I, Copyright Act of 1976 |