## Facts

- James J. Andrien, a New Jersey real-estate agent, created a detailed map of Long Beach Island after finding an existing chamber map hard to use.
- He assembled information from preexisting maps and other sources and conducted a personal survey to add items such as landmarks, fishing sites, and previously unlisted street names.
- He determined aspects of the map’s scale by measuring distances while driving between intersections.
- Andrien obtained a copyright registration in 1980 for the map as a compilation created from preexisting materials plus information gathered through his survey.
- Andrien hired a printer, whose employee Carolyn Haines performed production tasks described as artwork: coordinating scales, relettering street names, adding labels, and preparing printable material.
- Viewing the evidence in Andrien’s favor, Andrien selected and arranged the content and supervised Haines’s technical execution.
- After authorized copies ran out, Andrien alleged that the defendants distributed unauthorized copies and infringed his copyright, and he also asserted related unfair competition and unfair trade practices claims.

## Issues

1. Whether, on the summary-judgment record viewed in Andrien’s favor, Andrien could be considered the “author” of the map for copyright purposes despite not personally performing the physical layout and artwork.
2. Whether the district court improperly granted summary judgment by treating the printer’s employee as the author as a matter of law.

## Decision

- The Third Circuit reversed the grant of summary judgment for defendants and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held that, accepting Andrien’s account, the record did not support stripping him of author status.
- The court reasoned that copyright authorship can rest with the originator who conceives a work and authorizes its fixation under his direction, even if another performs mechanical or technical steps.

## Legal Principles

- Authorship focuses on the origin of the work’s intellectual conception and the selection and arrangement of expressive elements, not on who performs the manual steps of production.
- A person may be an author when another fixes the work in tangible form under that person’s direction, including where the other person functions as an amanuensis carrying out instructions without independent creative control.
- On summary judgment, where the nonmovant’s evidence supports a finding of authorship, a court may not resolve disputed inferences by declaring a different participant the author as a matter of law.

## Conclusion

Because the evidence, viewed favorably to Andrien, supported a finding that he conceived, selected, arranged, and directed the compilation embodied in the map while the printer’s employee performed technical execution, summary judgment denying him author status was improper; the case was reversed and remanded for further proceedings on infringement and related claims.


Andrien v. S. Ocean Cnty. Chamber of Com., 927 F.2d 132 (3d Cir. 1991)