Bridgeman v. Corel

Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
Toga picta in a wall painting from the François Tomb at Vulci
Court	United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Full case name	The Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corporation
Decided	February 18, 1999
Citation(s)	36 F. Supp. 2d 191, 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1731, 50 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1110
Case history
Prior action(s)	Judgment for defendants, 25 F. Supp. 2d 421 (S.D.N.Y. 1998)l lastb"
Case opinions
Photographic reproductions of visual works in the public domain were not copyrightable because the reproductions involved no originality. Upon reconsideration and reargument, judgment was again entered for defendants.

Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality. Even though accurate reproductions might require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element to determine whether a work is copyrightable under U.S. law is originality.

Corel Corporation sold, in the U.K., the U.S., and Canada, a CD-ROM called "Professional Photos CD Rom masters", which contained digitized images of paintings by European masters. Corel stated that it had obtained these images from a company called "Off the Wall Images", a company that no longer existed.

Bridgeman Art Library possessed a large library of photographs of paintings by European masters, as both transparencies and in digital form. The copyright terms on the paintings themselves had expired, but Bridgeman claimed that it owned a copyright on the photographs. It licensed copies of its photographs for a fee.

Bridgeman sued Corel. It claimed that since no other photographs of the public domain works had been authorized other than those that Bridgeman itself had been authorized to make, by the museums where the works were held, the only possible source for the digital images on Corel's CD-ROM was Bridgeman's own digitizations of its photographs. It claimed that since it owned the copyright on its photographs, Corel's copies were infringements of its copyright. Both parties moved for summary judgment.

Judge Lewis Kaplan in the Southern District Court of New York issued two judgments.

On November 13, 1998, Judge Kaplan granted the defendant's motion for a summary dismissal of the suit. The court applied U.K. law to determine whether the plaintiff's photographs were copyrightable in the first place, and applied U.S. law to determine whether copyright had been infringed. It determined that Bridgeman's photographs were not original works, and could not be validly copyrighted under U.K. law. It further determined that even if the photographs were copyrightable, no infringement could be deemed to have occurred under U.S. law, because the only way in which Bridgeman's and Corel's photographs were similar was that "both are exact reproductions of public domain works of art," so the only similarity between the two works was an uncopyrightable element: the public domain material itself. Therefore, under well-settled U.S. law, there could be no infringement.