This approach is sensible. As a matter of law, dictation from a non-human source should not be a bar to copyright. However, Defendants have invoked the defense of "factual" estoppel peculiar to the copyright field, maintaining that because Plaintiffs have continually represented that the author of the Course is Jesus, they cannot now claim that it is an original work of Schucman.
The leading case describing this particular type of copyright estoppel in this Circuit is Arica Institute, Inc. v. Palmer, 970 F.2d 1067 (2d Cir. 1992). The plaintiff in Arica had published works which claimed discovery, as "scientifically verifiable facts of human nature," of the "ego fixations" of the human spirit, which could be demonstrated in a laboratory and in clinical tests, and which centered around seven labeled so-called "enneagrams." Id. at 1074-75. The defendant published a work which relied on theories similar to those found in plaintiff's works and expressed those theories in sometimes identical terms, including use of the same seven labeled enneagrams. See id. at 1071-75. The Second Circuit held that the plaintiff, having continually represented that the enneagram labels were scientifically verifiable facts, was estopped from claiming in litigation that the labels were "metaphoric claims of philosophical truth." Id. at 1075. Hence, because the material had been
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