McCord Co. v. Plotnick

California Court of Appeal Dec 27, 1951 No. Civ. 18390Published

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Holding. The court held that the defendants' unauthorized copying and appropriation of the plaintiff's credit information for use in a competing publication constituted unfair competition, regardless of whether the material was copyrightable or involved explicit fraud.

Issues

Whether the principles of International News Service v. Associated Press apply to the unauthorized appropriation of credit information by a competitor.
Whether the parties are competitors despite differences in the scope of their services.
Whether the absence of copyright or fraud precludes a finding of unfair competition.
Whether the plaintiff's claim is barred by the doctrine of laches.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“The transaction speaks for itself, and a court of equity ought not to hesitate long in characterizing it as unfair competition in business.”

“In an action for injunctive relief against unfair competition it is unnecessary to prove that defendant’s conduct was fraudulent”

“It has all the attributes of property necessary for determining that a misappropriation of it by a competitor is unfair competition because contrary to good conscience.”

THE COURT.

From a judgment in favor of plaintiff in an action for unfair competition, defendants appeal.

Plaintiff publishes, five times a week at three points on the Pacific Coast, a newspaper known as McCord’s Daily Notification Sheet containing credit items of interest to banks, collection agencies, mercantile firms and other businesses. The information is collected by employees and correspondents. Plaintiff also publishes five times a week a textile edition of its newspaper containing those items from its general edition which are of interest to the textile trade in Southern California. The cost of these publications averages $10,000 monthly.

Defendant Ben Locker is the president of defendant West Coast Textile Corporation which publishes three times weekly to its subscribers a paper called ‘ ‘ Credit Briefs. ’ ’ The instant action was instituted to restrain defendants from copying or pirating items from plaintiff’s newspaper for publication in Credit Briefs, and for damages for the alleged diversion of plaintiff’s customers.

The only question raised by the appeal is whether the decision of the United States Supreme Court in

International News Service

Associated Press,

248 U.S. 215 [39 S.Ct. 68, 63 L.Ed. 211], is determinative of the issues in the instant action or whether, as contended by defendant, there are basic factual differences in the two cases which render that decision inapplicable.

In the cited case the parties were competitors in the gathering and distributing of news to newspapers throughout the United States. The International News Service took news from bulletins and early editions of eastern newspapers serviced, by Associated Press and telegraphed it for publication in western papers served by the former, with the result that because of the time differential and other factors the pirated news was in the hands of International News Service readers simultaneously with the service of its competitor, and occasionally even earlier. In holding such practice to be unfair competition the court said: “In doing this defendant, by its very act, admits that it is taking material that has been acquired by complainant as the result of organization and the expendí

[394]

McCord Co. v. Plotnick

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THE COURT.

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