## Facts

- B.J. Williams, a UCLA assistant professor, delivered lectures in an anthropology course.
- J. Edwin Weisser operated a commercial “Class Notes” business selling course outlines near UCLA.
- Weisser paid a student to attend Williams’s class, take systematic notes, type them, and deliver the typed notes to Weisser.
- Weisser placed a copyright notice in his own name on the typed notes, reproduced them, and sold and offered them for sale as study aids for Williams’s course.
- Williams objected; Weisser continued selling until served with a summons, complaint, and temporary restraining order.
- It was stipulated that Weisser used Williams’s name in selling the publications.
- Williams sought a permanent injunction, compensatory damages, and exemplary damages.

## Issues

1. Whether the common-law copyright in Williams’s lectures belonged to UCLA rather than to Williams.
2. Whether oral classroom delivery of the lectures constituted a general publication that divested any common-law copyright.
3. Whether Weisser’s copying and sale of substantially verbatim lecture notes was privileged as fair use and, relatedly, whether use of Williams’s name in marketing was actionable.
4. Whether the evidence supported compensatory and exemplary damages and permanent injunctive relief.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment for Williams.
- The court upheld a permanent injunction barring Weisser from copying, publishing, and selling notes of Williams’s UCLA lectures.
- The court upheld awards of $1,000 compensatory damages and $500 exemplary damages.
- The court held Williams owned the common-law copyright in his unpublished lectures and that classroom delivery was not a general publication divesting those rights.
- The court also held Weisser’s use of Williams’s name to sell the notes constituted an actionable appropriation of name (treated as an invasion of privacy under then-existing California law).

## Legal Principles

- An instructor’s unpublished lectures are protected as common-law literary property unless ownership has been transferred by contract or comparable proof of assignment.
- Faculty employment, without proof of an institutional claim or transfer, does not by itself vest a university with ownership of a professor’s common-law copyright in lectures.
- Oral delivery of lectures to an enrolled class, without distribution of tangible copies by the lecturer, is at most a limited publication and does not constitute general publication that forfeits common-law copyright.
- A commercial enterprise that arranges systematic capture, transcription, reproduction, and sale of a lecturer’s content may infringe the lecturer’s common-law copyright; such conduct is not excused as fair use when it is direct commercial exploitation.
- Using a person’s name to market a product without consent, in a manner that trades on identity or implied endorsement, can support tort liability for appropriation of name (then analyzed as a privacy invasion) and justify injunctive relief and damages, including exemplary damages for willful conduct.

## Conclusion

The court sustained an injunction and damages against a commercial note seller who paid a student to transcribe and sell a professor’s lectures, holding that the professor retained common-law copyright in the unpublished lectures, classroom delivery did not amount to general publication, and marketing the notes using the professor’s name constituted actionable appropriation.


Williams v. Weisser, 273 Cal. App. 2d 726 (Ct. App. 1969)