Tabberone Logo

Tabberone is pronounced tab ber won
not tay ber own

Tabbers Temptations     www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/ Home | Site Index | Disclaimer | Email Me!
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
Edmund Burke


This information is taken directly from the court opinion. It is not taken out of context nor is it altered.

From Ty v. Publications International, 292 F.3d 512 (7th 2002)

When Beanie Babies Collector's Guide was published in 1998, some Beanie Babies were selling in the secondary market for thousands of dollars, while others were selling for little more than their original purchase price. The range was vast, creating a demand for collectors' guides. Ty acknowledges as it must that a collectors' guide to a series of copyrighted works is no more a derivative work than a book review is. We cannot find a case on the point but the Copyright Act is clear. It defines a derivative work as "a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted." 17 U.S.C. sec. 101. A derivative work thus must either be in one of the forms named or be "recast, transformed, or adapted." Lee v. A.R.T. Co., 125 F.3d 580, 582 (7th Cir. 1997). The textual portions of a collectors' guide to copyrighted works are not among the examples of derivative works listed in the statute, and guides don't recast, transform, or adapt the things to which they are guides. A guide to Parisian restaurants is not a recasting, transforming, or adapting of Parisian restaurants. Indeed, a collectors' guide is very much like a book review, which is a guide to a book and which no one supposes is a derivative work. Both the book review and the collectors' guide are critical and evaluative as well as purely informational; and ownership of a copyright does not confer a legal right to control public evaluation of the copyrighted work.

counter for iweb