Facts:
"George
Aiken's
Chicken"
is
fast
food
restaurant
in
Pittsburgh,
The petitioners of the case were Twentieth Century Music Corp., which
owned the copyright to one of the songs, "The More I See You", and Mary
Bourne, who owned the copyright to the other song, "Me and My Shadow".
The petitioners claimed that Aiken's broadcast of their songs in his
establishment violated their right to publicly perform their work for profit.
While the United States District Court for the Western District of
Pennsylvania initially sided with the petitioners and required that Aiken
provide monetary compensation for the copyright infringement, in 1975 the
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned the ruling,
stating that the respondent did not infringe upon the petitioners' right under
the Copyright Act "[t]o perform the copyrighted work publicly for profit" since
the radio broadcast in the establishment was not equivalent to a
"performance". A similar decision was made in earlier court cases such as
Fortnightly Corp. v. United Artists in 1968 and Teleprompter Corp. v. CBS in
1974.
Issue:
Held:
No. Respondent did not infringe upon petitioners' exclusive right, under the
Copyright Act, "[t]o perform the copyrighted work publicly for profit," since
the radio reception did not constitute a "performance" of the copyrighted
Reason:
To hold in this case that the respondent Aiken "performed" the petitioners'
copyrighted works would thus require us to overrule two very recent
decisions of this Court. But such a holding would more than offend the
principles of stare decisis; it would result in a regime of copyright law that
would be both wholly unenforceable and highly inequitable.