“In the ease of composite or cyclopedic works, to which a great many authors contribute for hire and upon which the copyright was originally secured by the proprietor of the work it was felt that the proprietor of such work should have the exclusive right to apply for the renewal term. In some cases the contributors to such a work might number hundreds and be scattered over the world, and it would be impossible for the proprietor of the work to secure their cooperation in applying for the renewal.”
The reference to “composite … works to which a great many authors contribute for hire,” appears clearly to indicate that the terms “composite work” and “work made for hire” are not used in an incompatible sense.
Defendant Ringer, the present Register of Copyrights, in Renewal of Copyright, her 1960 Legislative Study No. 31, commented on this portion of the 1909 House Report as follows:
“The legislative history shows that the determinative factors in a ‘composite work’ were:
1) A number of authors contributing copyrightable matter to a single work; and
2) An employment or contractual arrangement entitling the proprietor to secure copyright in the various contributions.” ****** “The Committee reports on this final [Smoot-Currier] bill indicate a likelihood that the legislators regarded a ‘work made for hire’ as a species of ‘composite or cyclopedic work,’ and did not realize the breadth of the exception they were creating.” Comm. on the Judiciary, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., Study on Renewal of Copyright 131, 139 (Comm. Print 1960) (emphasis added).
This indeed seems the most likely if not the only plausible meaning of the House Report.[1]
In her present role of Register of Copyrights, defendant Ringer has understandably adopted the position of the Copyright Office. Although the construction given a statute by the agency charged with its administration is entitled to substantial weight, Udall v. Tallman, 380 U.S. 1, 16, 85 S.Ct. 792, 13 L.Ed.2d 616 (1965), the Copyright Office has repeatedly revealed its doubts about the proper interpretation of the statutory language in question, even after obtaining the opinion of the Attorney General. At page 17 of their Brief, defendants state:
“In an effort to resolve this matter without litigation and in accordance with its policy of resolving doubtful cases in favor of registration whenever possible, the Copyright Office informed the Plaintiffs that, as an exception in a limited number of cases, it may be arguable that renewal claims by the same claimant as ‘proprietor of a copyright in a composite work’ and ‘proprietor of a copyright in a work made for hire’ are not inconsistent and can therefore be made on the same application. However, the Copyright Office informed the Plaintiffs that to qualify for such exceptional treatment the Plaintiffs would be required to support each such claim with a statement that (1) all of the contributions in the work were made for hire, and (2) the work is ‘composite’ because disparate corporate employers-for-hire, each of whom would be
- ↑ The Attorney General’s Report, in footnote 8 on page 10, took a different position:
“Use of the words ‘for hire’ in the above quotation appears to have been a misnomer. The reason stated for giving the proprietor a right to renew in the case of a composite work—that it might not be possible to have the many contributors cooperate in applying for a renewal—is logical where those contributors were not employed on a salary basis and would therefore have had renewal rights as authors. That reason is inappropriate if the contributors had worked for hire since they would then have no renewal rights and the proprietor alone would be entitled to renew.”
However, it seems less likely that the author and readers of the House Report were sensitive to this rather abstruse nuance than that they understood the ordinary meaning of the words “composite works … to which a great many authors contribute for hire.”
