| Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Court | United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida |
| Full case name | Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena |
| Decided | December 9, 1993 |
| Citation | 839 F.Supp. 1552 |
| Holding | |
| Copying images from a magazine and placing them online is a violation ofcopyright law andtrademark law. | |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Harvey E. Schlesinger |
| Laws applied | |
| Copyright Act of 1976,Lanham Act | |
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena, 839F.Supp. 1552 (1993)[1] was acopyright infringement case decided by theUnited States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, holding that the unauthorized online distribution of copied photographs wascopyright infringement; and that removing a magazine's trademark from copied images wastrademark infringement.[1]
Defendant George Frena operated an early subscription-based onlinebulletin board service called Techs Warehouse BBS. Photographs copyrighted by plaintiffPlayboy Entertainment, Inc. ("PEI") werescanned from paper copies ofPlayboy magazine by Frena and uploaded onto Techs Warehouse BBS without permission. Subscribers to the BBS were allowed to view and download high-quality computerized versions of the images and store the files on their home computers. Frena provided 170 images in this fashion.[1]
Frena claimed to have never uploaded any of PEI's photographs onto the BBS and that his subscribers uploaded the photographs themselves. Frena stated that as soon as he was served with a summons and made aware of the matter, he removed the photographs and had since that time monitored the BBS to prevent additional PEI-owned photographs from being uploaded.[1]
PEI alleged that Frena was liable forcopyright infringement when the subscribers to his BBS downloaded and distributed unauthorized copies of PEI's copyrighted photographs. PEI also alleged that Frena had removed logos including "Playboy" and "Playmate" from the photos that had been copied fromPlayboy magazine, which constitutedtrademark infringement.[1]
The Court held that PEI owned the copyrights to the photographs in question, because they were originally published inPlayboy magazine for which PEI was the undisputed copyright owner. PEI's possession of the necessary copyright certificate constitutedprima facie evidence in favor of the company. Also, because the subscribers to the BBS made unauthorized copies of the images viadownloading and distributed them elsewhere on the Internet, Frena was found liable forcontributory infringement because he produced the original scanned copies himself.[1]
In another copyright-related argument, PEI claimed that Frena had infringed on its display rights, which under copyright law allow the owner to authorize where and how copyrighted works are displayed, and PEI had not authorized display of the images at Frena's BBS service. This argument was also found convincing by the court.[1]
Further, the court found that by removing the Playboy-oriented logos from the scanned images and replacing them with information about his BBS service, Frena had committedtrademark infringement under theLanham Act, because this act was likely to cause confusion among users as to the true origin of the images.[1]
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena has been frequently cited as an important early precedent in the emerging law of copyright on the Internet, particularly given the technological ease with which unauthorized copies of images can be reproduced and distributed online.[2] The ruling is also often cited as an influence on the passage of theDigital Millennium Copyright Act five years later, as that law attempted to enact penalties for web-based services thatcontribute to copyright infringement committed by their users.[3][4] The ruling is also sometimes cited as an early precedent for online trademark infringement disputes.[5]
