## Facts

- A California glass artist created and sold realistic “glass-in-glass” jellyfish sculptures, depicting vertically oriented jellyfish with trailing tentacles encased within a clear, rounded outer glass form.
- The artist registered multiple sculptures with the Copyright Office and sold the works nationally.
- A Hawaii glass artist later produced similar glass-in-glass jellyfish sculptures; he had previously seen the first artist’s works in magazines and in person.
- The similarities led to consumer confusion between the two artists’ sculptures.
- In a copyright infringement action, the district court issued a preliminary injunction broadly restricting the Hawaii artist from making jellyfish sculptures resembling the plaintiff’s designs.
- The defendants appealed the preliminary injunction to the Ninth Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether realistic glass-in-glass jellyfish sculptures contain protectable original expression, as distinct from unprotectable ideas, natural features, and standard elements of the medium.
2. Whether any protectable elements are broad enough in scope that similar jellyfish sculptures infringe.
3. Whether the district court applied the correct copyrightability and scope-of-protection analysis when granting a preliminary injunction.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit reversed the preliminary injunction.
- The court held that most shared features were unprotectable because they were dictated by jellyfish anatomy (a natural organism) or by conventional aspects of glass-in-glass sculpture.
- The plaintiff’s copyright, at most, was “thin,” covering only narrow, original artistic choices not compelled by nature or the medium.
- Given this limited protection, the broad injunction was unsupported because it effectively granted exclusive rights over the general concept of realistic glass-in-glass jellyfish sculptures.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright protects original expression, not ideas, facts, or concepts; natural phenomena and their realistic depiction remain in the public domain.
- Standard elements that flow from depicting a subject realistically, or from conventions of a chosen medium, are unprotectable (including scènes à faire–type constraints).
- A combination of unprotectable elements may receive protection only if the selection and arrangement reflect sufficient originality; when the arrangement is largely dictated by nature or medium conventions, protection is minimal.
- Realistic depictions of animals typically receive only thin protection, guarding against virtually identical copying of the creator’s distinct, original expressive details.
- In assessing infringement and injunctive relief, courts must filter out unprotectable elements and evaluate similarity only in the remaining protectable expression; failure to do so risks granting an improper monopoly.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit limited copyright protection for realistic glass-in-glass jellyfish sculptures to only the creator’s minor, original artistic variations and reversed a preliminary injunction that treated nature- and medium-driven features as protected expression.


Satava v. Lowry, 323 F.3d 805 (9th Cir. 2003)