## Facts

- Playwrights owned the copyright in the 1930 play *Dishonored Lady*, a dramatization drawing on the public-domain Madeleine Smith murder-trial story.
- Metro-Goldwyn Pictures produced and distributed the 1932 film *Letty Lynton*, for which it had acquired motion picture rights to a separate novel also derived from the Madeleine Smith story.
- The parties previously negotiated for film rights to *Dishonored Lady* and set a price, but the deal collapsed.
- The playwrights alleged the film copied their play’s protected elements, not merely the underlying historical narrative.
- The district court dismissed the complaint, characterizing similarities as unprotectable themes and ideas.
- The playwrights appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the film infringed the play by copying protectable expression (characterization, selection and arrangement of incidents, and dramatic structure) rather than unprotectable ideas or a public-domain story outline.
2. Whether access to the play plus detailed similarities supported an inference of copying sufficient to establish infringement.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit reversed the dismissal and held the film infringed the play.
- The court found the similarities were too specific and detailed to be explained by shared reliance on the public-domain source or by coincidence.
- The court ordered injunctive relief and an accounting of the defendants’ profits attributable to the infringement.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright does not protect historical facts or a general story “skeleton” in the public domain, but it does protect an author’s concrete dramatization, including characters, sequence and arrangement of incidents, and specific scene structure.
- Infringement may be shown by substantial similarity in the pattern of incidents, character relationships, and dramatic organization, even without verbatim copying of dialogue.
- Access combined with detailed similarities can justify an inference of copying; intent to copy is not required, and unconscious copying can still be actionable.

## Conclusion

The court held that, although both works could lawfully draw on the same public-domain murder-trial narrative, the film impermissibly appropriated the play’s protected expressive choices in characterization and scene-by-scene dramatic structure, warranting an injunction and a profits accounting.


Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp., 81 F.2d 49 (2d Cir. 1936)