## Facts

- Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. and other motion picture studios owned copyrights in various films.
- Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc. operated a resort hotel in Palm Springs, California, where each guest room had a large-screen projection television and a videodisc player.
- Guests could rent movie videodiscs from the hotel’s lobby gift shop for a daily fee and play the discs in their own rooms on the in-room equipment.
- Hotel employees would assist guests, upon request, with operating the equipment.
- Columbia sued, alleging that the hotel’s videodisc rental practice infringed the studios’ exclusive right to perform the copyrighted works publicly under 17 U.S.C. § 106(4).
- The district court granted summary judgment for the hotel, ruling that in-room viewings by guests were not “public” performances under the Copyright Act.

## Issues

1. Whether guests’ in-room viewing of rented videodiscs on hotel-provided equipment constitutes a “public performance” under 17 U.S.C. §§ 101 and 106(4).
2. Whether a hotel guest room is a “place open to the public” or a place where a “substantial number of persons” is gathered under § 101’s public-place clause.
3. Whether the hotel’s videodisc rental arrangement involves transmitting a performance “to the public” under § 101’s transmit clause.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the hotel.
- The court held that performances occurring when guests watched videodiscs inside their own hotel rooms were not performed “publicly” within the meaning of the Copyright Act.
- The court concluded hotel guest rooms are not “public” places for purposes of § 101’s public-place clause.
- The court rejected the argument that the arrangement constituted a transmission “to the public,” treating each in-room viewing as a private performance limited to the occupants of that room.
- The court reviewed the summary judgment ruling de novo and found no material factual dispute about the hotel’s system.

## Legal Principles

- Liability under 17 U.S.C. § 106(4) requires a “public” performance as defined in 17 U.S.C. § 101.
- A hotel guest room, during a guest’s stay, is treated as a private space rather than a “place open to the public” for § 101’s public-place clause.
- Separate, room-confined viewings of a work by individual guests do not constitute communicating a performance “to the public” under § 101’s transmit clause where the viewing is limited to the occupants of each room.
- When the material facts about the exhibition method are undisputed, whether the conduct is “public” under § 101 may be resolved as a matter of law on summary judgment.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that a hotel’s practice of renting videodiscs to guests for viewing in their private rooms on in-room equipment does not infringe the copyright owners’ public-performance right because the performances are not “public” under the Copyright Act’s public-place or transmit definitions.


Columbia Pictures Indus., Inc. v. Pro. Real Est. Invs., Inc., 866 F.2d 278 (9th Cir. 1989)