## Facts

- Patrick Hamilton wrote and owned the copyright to the play *Gas Light*, first published and copyrighted in 1939.
- Loew’s Incorporated acquired the exclusive motion picture rights to the play and produced the film *Gaslight* based on it.
- Columbia Broadcasting System produced and broadcast a Jack Benny television comedy structured around the *Gaslight* story.
- The television program tracked the original work’s plot structure and dramatic development closely, with limited original material added.
- Benny and CBS did not obtain permission from Hamilton or Loew’s.
- Hamilton and Loew’s sued in federal district court for copyright infringement and obtained an injunction barring further exhibition of the program.
- Benny and CBS appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the Benny/CBS television program, though presented as a parody, constituted an infringing dramatic adaptation of the copyrighted play and film.
2. Whether fair use permitted substantial copying of protected dramatic elements for a commercial televised parody.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment for Hamilton and Loew’s.
- The court held the television program was an infringing dramatization because it appropriated substantial protected expression, including the basic plot structure and dramatic development.
- The court rejected defendants’ parody-based fair-use defense because the copying was extensive and functioned as a competing commercial entertainment performance.
- The injunction against further production or exhibition of the television program remained in force.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright infringement may be found when a later work appropriates protected dramatic expression—such as plot sequence, character relationships, and dramatic development—rather than merely borrowing an unprotectable idea.
- Parody may justify some borrowing to evoke the original, but it does not permit taking substantial, qualitatively important portions that recreate the original’s protected dramatic core.
- Fair use is limited and turns on the amount and importance of what is taken, the purpose and character of the use (including commercial use), and the likely effect on the copyright holder’s markets.
- A commercial parody that effectively retells the original story with a comic overlay, and risks substituting for licensed exploitation, can fall outside fair use.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that a televised “parody” that closely tracks and retells a copyrighted play’s protected dramatic structure infringes when it copies extensively and competes commercially, and it affirmed injunctive relief barring further broadcasts.


Benny v. Loew’s Inc., 239 F.2d 532 (9th Cir. 1956)