## Facts

- Lois B. Morris, a freelance journalist, wrote a monthly “Mood News” column for *Allure* magazine for about eight years under annual written agreements.
- The agreements gave Condé Nast exclusive first worldwide publication rights for 90 days after publication in *Allure*, while Morris retained copyright ownership in her individual articles.
- Condé Nast registered each *Allure* issue containing Morris’s columns with the Copyright Office as a collective work (periodical issue); Morris did not separately register her columns.
- Business Concepts, Inc. (BCI) published a beauty-salon industry newsletter and reproduced several of Morris’s *Allure* columns without her permission and without attributing them to her.
- Morris sued BCI and its principals in federal court alleging copyright infringement and false designation of origin under the Lanham Act.

## Issues

1. Whether Condé Nast’s registration of *Allure* issues as collective works satisfied 17 U.S.C. § 411(a)’s registration requirement for Morris’s individual, unregistered articles.
2. Whether Condé Nast’s publication rights and its collective-work registrations made it a “copyright owner” whose registration could be treated as covering Morris’s contributions for § 411(a) purposes.
3. Whether collective-works doctrines and the statutory treatment of divisible copyright interests permitted an unregistered contributor to sue based on the publisher’s collective-work registration.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit affirmed summary judgment for defendants on the copyright claim.
- The court held that registration of the *Allure* issues as collective works did not constitute registration of Morris’s individual articles for purposes of § 411(a).
- Because Morris had not registered her articles, she could not maintain a federal copyright infringement action.
- The court left intact the district court’s disposition of the remaining claim after dismissal of the copyright claim.

## Legal Principles

- Under 17 U.S.C. § 411(a), registration of the copyright claim is a prerequisite to filing an infringement action for a United States work.
- A periodical issue is a “collective work,” and a contributor’s article within it is a separate, independent work; absent contrary agreement, the publisher typically receives limited privileges under § 201(c) tied to the collective work and its revisions.
- Registration of a collective work by the collective-work owner does not, without more, register each separately owned contribution for purposes of allowing the contributor to sue for infringement of that contribution.
- Where ownership of rights is divided between different parties, a registration filed by one owner does not automatically satisfy § 411(a) for another owner’s distinct, unregistered work.

## Conclusion

The court held that a freelancer who retained copyright in her articles could not sue for infringement of those articles when she never registered them, and the magazine publisher’s registrations of the periodical issues as collective works did not substitute for registration of the individual contributions under § 411(a).


Morris v. Bus. Concepts, Inc., 259 F.3d 65 (2d Cir. 2001)