Jury Verdict for Copyright Infringement of Format of Yacht Listings Affirmed By 11th Circuit

Case: Buc International v. Yacht Council Limited No. 04-13653 (11th Cir. 6/21/07)

The One Sentence Summary: A jury verdict finding copyright infringement of yacht listings using plaintiff's registered arrangement of headings was affirmed.


What They Were Fighting About: Defendant created a new yacht listing service that included many copies of listings in plaintiff's yacht listing service. Plaintiff had a copyrighted format for arranging yacht information. The jury found for plaintiff.

Eleventh Circuit Holdings:

• Plaintiff's compilation of yachts for sale was sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection.
• Plaintiff which created standard headings for yacht listings was entitled to protection for this arrangement despite the fact that third party yacht brokers filled in the yacht information because 98% of yacht listings included the protected headings.
• The doctrine of merger did not prevent protection for plaintiff's selection of headings for description of a yacht. There were other ways to select and arrange the information about a yacht, so protection of plaintiff's format was allowed.
• The judge properly instructed the jury that it must find "substantial similarity" rather than "virtual identicality" between the plaintiff's work and the infringing work.
• Defendant waived its right to seek a "virtual identicality" instruction due to its late request and failure to submit the written proposed instruction.
• In deciding defendant's claims seeking a declaratory judgment claim that the copyright was invalid, the judge was bound by the jury's verdict that the copyright was valid.