## Facts

- Charles Selden obtained a copyright for a book titled *Selden’s Condensed Ledger, or Book-keeping Simplified*, which described a particular method of bookkeeping and included illustrated examples.
- The book consisted of an introductory essay explaining Selden’s method, with appended forms showing how the method would be used in practice.
- The examples were made up of blank forms with ruled lines, columns, and headings designed to record transactions under Selden’s approach.
- Selden’s method aimed to achieve results comparable to double-entry bookkeeping while presenting the transactions for a day, week, or month on a single page (or two facing pages) through a particular arrangement of columns and headings.
- W.C.M. Baker created and sold blank account-book forms that implemented the same general plan and produced similar results, though he used different arrangements of columns and different headings.
- Selden’s widow (standing for Selden’s rights) sued Baker in federal court for copyright infringement, alleging that Baker’s forms unlawfully copied protected material from Selden’s copyrighted book.
- Baker argued that a bookkeeping method, and the arrangement of ruled lines and columns on blank forms used to carry out that method, were not protected by copyright.
- The district court ruled for Selden, and the circuit court affirmed; Baker appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether copyright in a book that explains and illustrates a bookkeeping method gives the author exclusive rights to the method (the “art” or system) itself.
2. Whether copyright can bar others from publishing and selling blank account forms (ruled lines, columns, headings) that are used to carry out the method described in the copyrighted book.
3. Whether exclusive rights in such a useful method, if available at all, must be obtained through patent rather than copyright.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the decree for Selden and remanded.
- The Court held that copyright in Selden’s book protected the author’s original expression (the explanatory text and any protectable illustrative material), not the bookkeeping method described.
- The Court held that Selden’s copyright did not give him an exclusive right to use the bookkeeping plan, nor an exclusive right in the blank forms necessary to use the plan.
- Because Baker’s publications used a different arrangement and headings and did not copy Selden’s protected expression as such, Baker’s sale of forms implementing the same method was not actionable under copyright.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright protects original expression in a book (the author’s explanation, arrangement of words, and protectable illustrations), but it does not protect the art, method, or system that the book explains.
- A claim to exclusive ownership of a bookkeeping method cannot be maintained under copyright simply because the method is described and illustrated in a copyrighted treatise.
- Where use of a method requires forms, ruled lines, columns, or headings as the necessary means of applying the method, copyright in the treatise does not confer a monopoly over those functional forms as a way to control use of the method.
- Exclusive rights in a new and useful art, process, or method are matters for patent law; copyright cannot be used as a substitute for patent protection.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court held that Selden’s copyright in his bookkeeping book covered only the book’s expressive content and did not grant exclusive rights in the bookkeeping method or the blank ledger forms needed to use it; any exclusive control over the method had to come, if at all, from patent law, so the injunction against Baker was reversed and the case was remanded.


Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 25 L. Ed. 841 (1879)