Photogs Ask Supreme Court to Hear NGS Case

Three photographers have separately petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review of their failed copyright infringement claims against National Geographic Society.

Fred Ward, Douglas Faulkner, and Louis Psihoyos are all seeking judgment against the publisher over The Complete National Geographic, a CD compilation that includes all past issue of NGS.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the NGS CD doesn't infringe the photographers' copyrights because it is a revision of existing works, rather than a new work. Under copyright law, publishers can issue revisions of existing works without permission from the owners of articles or photos included in the original works.

But the photographers insists that the NGS CD is a new work rather than a revision of an existing work because it includes a search engine, advertising and other elements that distinguish it from the original magazines.

The Second Circuit ruling against the photographers, contradicted an earlier ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which concluded that the NGS CD was a new product rather than a revision. The plaintiff in that case, photographer Jerry Greenberg, won a $400,000 jury award for copyright infringement.

"[The Supreme Court's] review is urgently needed to resolve the conflict between the Second and Eleventh Circuits," Ward's lawyers argued in their petition to the high court. "Unless NGS is held accountable for the engine of infringement it has created, copyright will soon mean nothing in the digital world and the incentives on which our copyright system rests will be severely diminished."

NGS spokesperson MJ Jacobsen says the publisher will not oppose the requests for a Supreme Court hearing, in order to get the conflict between the appellate court rulings resolved.

"It is a virtually impossible position for any [publisher] to know that one federal appellate court holds a single product perfectly appropriate and lawful under federal law in three states and another federal appellate court to hold precisely the same product an improper infringement of federal copyright law in three other states," Jacobsen says.

Related stories

Court Upholds Judgment Against National Geographic
Photographers Lose NGS Appeal