TANIT BUDAY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. NEW YORK YANKEES PARTNERSHIP, AN OHIO LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, Defendant-Appellee., 486 Fed. Appx. 894

Summary

The district court should have notified the parties and allowed briefing on the jurisdictional issue before dismissing the complaint. However, the court agreed that plaintiff's complaint had to be dismissed. Contrary to the conclusion of the district court, plaintiff did indeed claim a copyright based on the provisions of federal law because the 1976 Copyright Act preempted the common law of copyright, and brought unpublished works under the protection of federal copyright law, which included the right of first publication among the rights accorded to the copyright owner. Unfortunately for plaintiff, however, the allegations in the complaint conclusively established that she had no such copyright. The "grandfathering" provisions of the 1976 Copyright Act applied to the common-law copyright in unpublished works, but the factual allegations in plaintiff's complaint were inconsistent with her characterization of the logo as unpublished (plaintiff alleged that the logo was currently in use...