website. The organization demanded that he cease and desist from infringing its copyrights. Veeck filed a declaratory judgment action seeking a ruling that he did not violate the Copyright Act. SBCCI counterclaimed for copyright infringement, unfair competition and breach of contract. Both parties moved for summary judgment on the copyright infringement issue.
Finding no genuinely disputed material facts, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of SBCCI, including a permanent injunction and monetary damages. On appeal, a divided panel of this court upheld SBCCI's copyrights in the municipal building codes posted by Veeck, and it rejected his defenses to infringement based on due process, merger, fair use, copyright misuse and waiver.
We elected to rehear this case en banc because of the novelty and importance of the issues it presents.
DISCUSSION[1]
As the organizational author of original works, SBCCI indisputably holds a copyright in its model building codes. U.S.C. § 102(a). See 17 Copyright law permits an author exclusively to make or condone derivative works and to regulate the copying and
- ↑ We review the district court's grant of summary judgment (de novo. Morris v. Covan World Wide Moving, Inc., 144 F.3d 377, 380 (5th Cir. 1998); Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c). At the summary judgment stage, a court may not weigh the evidence or evaluate the credibility of witnesses, and all justifiable inferences will be made in the nonmoving party's favor. Id. (citing Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2513-14 (1986)). The district court drew some inferences from the facts, however, regarding the impact of copyrightability on SBCCI's operations that, if material, should not have been decided without a trial. We find it unnecessary to reach those issues.
4
