Eighth Circuit Expands Its Copyright Law Jurisprudence

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit expanded its jurisprudence on copyright law twice in recent months. Addressing questions ranging from copyrightability to fair use, and arising from separate disputes involving a car dealership's customer intake form and a popular meme, these two opinions round out a body of just seven decisions on copyright law released by this appellate court in the past five years.

A Simple Form Is Not Copyrightable

First, in Ragan v. Berkshire Hathaway Automotive, 91 F.4th 1267 (8th Cir. 2024), the appeals court assessed whether the work in question was eligible for copyright protection at all. The plaintiff, Ronald Ragan Jr., alleged that the defendant infringed his copyright in an intake form that he had developed to use when meeting with potential customers at a car dealership. The one-page form included prompts and spaces to note answers to questions such as "Guest Name" and "Address," "How Did You Hear About Us?", whether the customer was interested in a new or used car or truck, and which make and year, information about any potential vehicle to be traded in, and the customer's desired financing ("Drive Home Today Budget"). The defendant moved for judgment on the pleadings on its defense that the work was not copyrightable, arguing that the intake form was not sufficiently original to qualify for copyright protection. Under both the U.S. Constitution and the Copyright Act itself, a work must be "original," which is not a high bar but requires "at least some minimal degree of creativity," (citing Section 102(a) of the Copyright Act and Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service., 499 U.S. 340, 111 S. Ct. 1282, 1287 (1991)). In Feist, the Supreme Court found that although factual compilations could be copyrightable if the choices as to selection and arrangement are creative, a telephone directory organized alphabetically by surname lacked sufficient originality to qualify for copyright protection.