## Facts

- An author developed a three-lecture series titled “How to Improve Memory” over several years and registered the lectures for copyright in 1925.
- The author later assigned the copyright to a corporation formed to market the lectures, where he served as president.
- Robert H. Nutt previously worked with a business connected to the author and had access to the substance of the copyrighted lectures.
- After leaving that business relationship, Nutt began giving his own memory-improvement lectures.
- Transcripts of Nutt’s 1927 lectures were compared against the copyrighted lectures and showed close similarity in associations, key words, sequence, and method of presentation.
- A federal district court entered an interlocutory decree holding the copyright valid and infringed; Nutt appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether copyright in lectures protects only the literal words or also the original arrangement and presentation of the material.
2. Whether non-verbatim copying (including paraphrase and replication of structure and associations) can constitute infringement.
3. Whether public oral delivery of lectures before registration dedicates the content to the public domain and defeats copyright.
4. Whether incorporation of ideas found in earlier works invalidates the copyright in the lectures.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit affirmed the interlocutory decree.
- The court held the copyright valid and enforceable.
- The court found infringement because Nutt copied the protected treatment of the subject—its organization, associations, and presentation—rather than merely sharing a general topic.
- The court rejected the argument that prior public delivery placed the lectures in the public domain.
- The court rejected the argument that use of preexisting ideas defeated copyright, because protection covers expression, not ideas.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright protects the author’s original treatment of a subject, including the arrangement, association, and presentation of ideas, not the subject matter itself.
- Infringement does not require verbatim duplication; paraphrasing or other evasive copying may infringe when it constitutes a substantial and unfair taking of protected expression.
- The infringement inquiry focuses on whether the accused work is independently produced or makes a substantial and unfair use of the copyrighted work.
- Public oral performance of lectures, without more, does not forfeit the right to secure and enforce copyright in the lecture text.
- Similarity of underlying ideas to earlier works does not invalidate a copyright where the later work reflects a distinct expressive form and organization.

## Conclusion

The court upheld protection for the expressive structure of a lecture series and affirmed infringement where a later lecturer replicated the original work’s organization and presentation, while also holding that prior public delivery and shared ideas did not defeat copyright.


Nutt v. Nat’l Inst. Inc. for the Improvement of Memory, 31 F.2d 236 (2d Cir. 1929)