Acquisition by Creation
International News Service v. Associated Press
1918
Facts: Plaintiff (AP) and Defendants (INS) are both involved in the news collection business. The collected news are distributed by the parties to newspapers around the county. Both plaintiff and defendant are in direct competition. The defendants were involved in collecting news posted by the plaintiffs on bulletin boards and newspapers and then reproducing these news as their own work Rules: You cannot accept someone else unabandoned property so as to represent it as your own for profit. Acquisition by creation: cannot be an adopted property of someone else It is okay to imitate but not represent as your own News is not within the operation of the copyright act. Issues: Can INS take uncopyrighted information and sell it as their own?
Reasoning: INS cannot take AP news and sell it as their own. What they are doing is taking the work,, effort resources, costs, etc. that AP put into gathering the news, taking that product and disguising it as their own. They are not taking public information by taking quasi property from AP and making it their own to further their profit motives and nullify AP’s.
Further: INS said that a portion of AP’s news is distributed by these bulletin boards. These become public information. (P) no longer has the right to call the information their own. o The difference would a person buying a newspaper and telling his friend the stories and a person buying the newspaper and reselling the stories to his friends. AP has a property right to its news by keeping it a secret. Once they release the secret it is no longer solely their information.