Miller v. Universal City Studios, Inc.

650 F.2d 1365 (5th Cir. 1981)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

A college-aged daughter of a wealthy Florida land developer was abducted from an Atlanta motel room and buried alive in a plywood and fiberglass capsule. A crude life-support system kept her alive for the five days she was underground before her rescue. P, a reporter for the Miami Herald, covered the story and collaborated with the victim to write a book about the crime. The book was copyrighted. A producer who worked for D read the condensed version of the book and thought the story would make a good television movie. He gave a copy of the book to a scriptwriter, who immediately began work on a screenplay. Negotiations for the purchase of the movie rights were undertaken. No agreement was reached. The scriptwriter was eventually advised that the use of the book in completing the script was 'verboten.' P sued D. The evidence at trial was conflicting on whether the scriptwriter relied almost entirely on the book in writing the screenplay or whether he arrived at his version of the kidnapping story independently. D argued that the book had only uncopyrightable facts. P's expert testified to numerous similarities between the works. The court instructed that facts were uncopyrightable but also stated to the jury that an author’s research of facts was copyrightable. The instruction was given over the strenuous objection of D. In P’s closing argument, P's counsel again stressed that everything P did in his research for eighteen to twenty months and put in his book was copyrightable. The jury ruled for P.