## Facts

- Rebecca Reyher authored, and Ruth Gannett illustrated, a children’s book titled *My Mother Is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World* (1945), based on a story Reyher heard from her mother and “adapted” in her own treatment.
- The book depicts a young girl in rural Russia who becomes separated from her mother at a festival, describes her as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” rejects multiple mistaken “matches,” and is reunited with a mother who appears plain to others; the moral ties beauty to love.
- Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) produced a *Sesame Street* skit titled “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World,” and published illustrated and print versions in *Sesame Street Magazine* and through Tuesday Publications, Inc. (TPI).
- CTW/TPI’s versions used a young boy, an African setting, shorter and simplified episodes, different characters and details, and a different moral emphasizing that beauty varies by observer.
- Plaintiffs sued CTW and TPI for copyright infringement, alleging unlawful copying of their book’s protectable content.

## Issues

1. Whether the general plot/theme of a retold folk-type story is protectable expression or an unprotectable idea.
2. Whether CTW/TPI’s works are substantially similar to plaintiffs’ protectable expression (text, illustrations, characterization, setting, and treatment) so as to constitute infringement.

## Decision

- After a bench trial, the district court dismissed the complaint, reasoning that plaintiffs’ book was derived from a public-domain story line and that defendants did not copy plaintiffs’ text or illustrations.
- The Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal on a different basis: there was no substantial similarity as to copyrightable matter.
- The court held that the shared narrative premise and title-level similarity reflected an unprotectable idea rather than protectable expression.
- Certiorari was denied.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright does not protect a general theme, story line, or narrative idea; it protects only the author’s original expression.
- Infringement turns on whether the defendant appropriated the plaintiff’s particular expression through similarities in treatment, details, scenes, incidents, dialogue, characterization, and other expressive choices.
- For literary and artistic works, substantial similarity may be assessed by comparing the works’ “total concept and feel,” focusing on qualitative similarities in protectable elements rather than abstract plot overlap.
- An author who retells or adapts public-domain or folk material may obtain protection for original expressive contributions but cannot monopolize the underlying tale or plot pattern.

## Conclusion

The Second Circuit held that defendants’ works, though sharing a basic narrative premise with plaintiffs’ book, were not substantially similar in protectable expression when considered as a whole; taking only an unprotectable idea did not constitute infringement, so dismissal was affirmed.


Reyher v. Children's Television Workshop, 533 F.2d 87 (2d Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 980 (1976)