## Facts

- Wainwright, an institutional research and brokerage firm, produced lengthy, original analytical reports on public companies, based on substantial investigation and professional judgment, and copyrighted those reports.
- Wall Street Transcript Corporation published a weekly financial newspaper, controlled editorially by its chairman and sole stockholder, Richard A. Holman.
- The newspaper ran a “Wall Street Roundup” feature offering purported summaries of major investment research reports, including Wainwright’s.
- The published abstracts conveyed Wainwright’s analytical conclusions, predictions, and recommendations, not merely general background facts.
- After Wainwright began formally copyrighting its reports and demanded that the practice stop, the newspaper continued publishing the abstracts.
- Wainwright sued for copyright infringement and related unfair trade practices, seeking damages and injunctive relief.
- The district court granted a preliminary injunction barring further publication of abstracts of Wainwright’s copyrighted reports; defendants appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether publishing abstracts of Wainwright’s copyrighted research reports likely constituted infringement or was protected as fair use.
2. Whether the First Amendment insulated the publication of such abstracts as financial news reporting.
3. Whether the requirements for a preliminary injunction were met (irreparable harm and likelihood of success on the merits, or serious questions plus a hardship balance favoring the movant).

## Decision

- The Second Circuit affirmed the preliminary injunction.
- The court held Wainwright showed a sufficient likelihood of success on its copyright infringement claim.
- The court concluded the abstracts were not likely fair use because they appropriated the reports’ qualitative core for a commercial, substitutive purpose.
- The court rejected the First Amendment defense because copyright law permits reporting facts and developments but not copying protected expressive analysis.
- The court agreed that threatened market substitution and loss of demand supported irreparable harm at the preliminary-injunction stage.

## Legal Principles

- Fair use is unlikely where a defendant commercially repackages a plaintiff’s protected analytical expression in a form that can substitute for the original, especially when the taking is substantial in qualitative value.
- Copyright protection extends beyond verbatim copying to condensed versions that capture the “essential findings” and expressive substance of a work.
- The First Amendment does not create a general privilege to copy protected expression; it protects reporting of facts and developments, not appropriation of a source’s expressive form.
- A preliminary injunction may issue upon a showing of irreparable harm and likelihood of success on the merits (or serious merits questions plus a hardship balance favoring the movant); likely market harm from infringing use can support irreparable injury.

## Conclusion

The court upheld preliminary injunctive relief because the newspaper’s abstracts likely copied the expressive heart of copyrighted investment research for a commercial, substitutive purpose, creating a risk of market harm that defeated fair use and was not excused by the First Amendment.


Wainwright Sec., Inc. v. Wall St. Transcript Corp., 558 F.2d 91 (2d Cir. 1977)