## Facts

- A producer and dealer created and sold eight mezzotint engravings derived from “old master” paintings in the public domain.
- The mezzotints were made through a labor-intensive process requiring hand tracing, scraping metal plates to create light and shadow, and printing from plates, with colors applied by hand.
- The trial court found the engravings reflected individual skill and judgment and differed from the underlying paintings in line, shading, coloring, and other minor but recognizable respects.
- Competing lithograph dealers and their printer reproduced the mezzotints as color lithographs and sold them in the United States without authorization.
- The trial court found the copying deliberate, held the copyrights valid, found infringement, and entered judgment including an accounting of profits.

## Issues

1. Whether copyright protection requires patent-like “inventiveness,” or only minimal originality.
2. Whether reproductions of public-domain paintings can be copyrighted when they contain distinguishable, nontrivial variations attributable to the reproducer.
3. Whether a work’s copyrightability is defeated by the existence (or possibility) of similar independently created reproductions of the same public-domain source.
4. Whether an antitrust-based “unclean hands” theory bars enforcement of the copyrights.
5. Whether an infringer may deduct income taxes paid on infringement profits when calculating profits owed in an equitable accounting.

## Decision

- The court affirmed that copyright does not require patent-like novelty or inventiveness; it requires independent creation and more than a merely trivial variation.
- The court held the mezzotints were copyrightable derivative works because the engravers contributed distinguishable variations recognizable as their own, despite aiming for faithful reproduction.
- The court held similar or even identical works may each be protected if independently created; copying, not similarity alone, is the wrong.
- The court rejected the asserted antitrust “unclean hands” defense on the record presented and did not bar enforcement.
- The court modified the accounting by disallowing deductions for income taxes paid on profits from the infringing sales.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright’s originality requirement is minimal and differs from patent standards; it does not demand novelty, ingenuity, or aesthetic merit.
- A derivative work based on public-domain material is protectable to the extent it embodies the author’s original contributions, even if the variations are modest and may be unintended.
- Independent creation can support multiple valid copyrights in similar works; infringement turns on copying.
- Equitable relief for infringement is not defeated by generalized allegations of anticompetitive conduct absent a sufficient basis to bar enforcement in the case.
- In computing an infringer’s profits in an accounting, income taxes paid on those profits are not properly deductible.

## Conclusion

The court upheld copyright protection for mezzotint reproductions of public-domain paintings where the engravers’ work introduced nontrivial, recognizable variations, rejected patent-like novelty requirements and a record-insufficient antitrust defense, and required profits to be calculated without deducting the infringers’ income taxes.


Alfred Bell & Co. v. Catalda Fine Arts, Inc., 191 F.2d 99 (2d Cir. 1951)