Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co.
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Argued --- Decided --- October 10, 2001
Full case name: Suntrust Bank, as Trustee of the Stephen Mitchell trusts f.b.o. Eugene Muse Mitchell and Joseph Reynolds Mitchell v. Houghton Mifflin Company Citations: 268 F.3d 1257 Prior history: 136 F.Supp.2d 1357 Subsequent history: ---
Holding
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Court membership
Chief Judge --- Associate Judges --- Birch, Marcus Stanley Marcus (judge) Stanley Marcus is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.- Early life, education and legal training :... , Wood (of the 7th Cir. United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the courts in the following districts:* Central District of Illinois* Northern District of Illinois... , sitting by designation)
Case opinions
Majority by: --- Birch Joined by: ---
Laws applied
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Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 252 F. 3d 1165

Case citation

Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

 (11th Cir. 2001), opinion at 268 F.3d 1257, was a case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Middle District of Alabama...

 against the owner of Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with the Wind, which was the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.-Family:Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta,...

's Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind

The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...

, vacating an injunction prohibiting the publisher of Alice Randall

Alice Randall

Alice Randall is an American author and songwriter. Randall grew up in Washington, D.C.. She attended Harvard University, where she earned an honors degree in English and American literature, before moving to Nashville in 1983 to become a country songwriter. She currently lives in Nashville,...

's The Wind Done Gone

The Wind Done Gone

The Wind Done Gone is the first novel written by Alice Randall. It was a bestselling historical parallel novel that reinterprets the famous American novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.- Plot summary :...

from distributing the book.

This case arguably stands for the principle that the creation and publication of a carefully written parody

Parody

A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 novel in the United States counts as fair use

Fair use

Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...

. Despite stating that substantial portions of Mitchell's work were used, the Court of Appeals found that the likely outcome of a full adjudication of the rights involved was a finding of fair use. Mitchell's estate chose to drop the suit after publisher Houghton agreed to make a donation to Morehouse College

Morehouse College

Morehouse College is a private, all-male, liberal arts, historically black college located in Atlanta, Georgia. Along with Hampden-Sydney College and Wabash College, Morehouse is one of three remaining traditional men's colleges in the United States....

. In permitting parody without permission, the decision follows the previous United States Supreme Court decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.

Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 was a United States Supreme Court copyright law case that established that a commercial parody can qualify as fair use...

which ruled that 2 Live Crew

2 Live Crew

2 Live Crew was a hip hop group from Miami, Florida. They caused considerable controversy with the sexual themes in their work, particularly on their 1989 album As Nasty As They Wanna Be.- Early career :...

's unlicensed use of the bass line from Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison

Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...

's song "Oh, Pretty Woman

Oh, Pretty Woman

"Oh, Pretty Woman" is a song, released in August 1964, which was a worldwide success for Roy Orbison. Recorded on the Monument Records label in Nashville, Tennessee, it was written by Roy Orbison and Bill Dees. The song spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100...

" constituted fair use under copyright law and extends that principle from songs to novels. It is binding precedent

Precedent

In common law legal systems, a precedent or authority is a principle or rule established in a legal case that a court or other judicial body may apply when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts...

in the Eleventh Circuit.

External links

• Text of the case
• Locating Copyright within the First Amendment Skein by N. W. Netanel 54 Stanford Law Review 101