Mannion v. Coors Brewing Co.

Mannion v. Coors Brewing Co.
Court	United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Full case name	Jonathan Mannion v. Coors Brewing Co. and Carol H. Williams Advertising
Decided	July 21, 2005
Citation	377 F.Supp.2d 444
Case history
Subsequent actions	Plaintiff's motion for reconsideration of damages denied, 530 F.Supp.2d 543 (2008)
Court membership
Judge sitting	Lewis A. Kaplan
Case opinions
Photograph of professional basketball player was sufficiently original in its expression to be copyrightable; but whether allegedly infringing image was substantially similar was a question of fact. Summary judgement denied
Keywords
copyrightability photography

Mannion v. Coors Brewing Co. (377 F.Supp.2d 444) is a 2005 copyright case decided by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. It concerns the issue of copyrightability in photography. Jonathan Mannion, the plaintiff, sued the brewer and its advertising agency, Carol H. Williams Advertising (CHWA), alleging they had too closely copied an image he took of basketball star Kevin Garnett.

Mannion had photographed Garnett wearing athletic clothing and jewelry for a magazine article. CHWA, after having licensed Mannion's image for possible use on a billboard, decided to shoot a very similar image for its ads. Mannion registered his image with the U.S. Copyright Office and sued Coors and CHWA after seeing one of the billboards several months later. Coors argued in its defense that Mannion was claiming copyright on the idea of a photo of a Black man dressed that way and there was nothing original and protectable in it. Nor were the two images substantially similar since the man in the Coors ad was turned in a different direction and the image was in black and white rather than color. Both parties moved for summary judgement.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan's decision denied Mannion's motion since he found the substantial similarity question to be one of fact that should be tried. (A jury ultimately found for Mannion.) But he held also that Mannion's image was indeed original enough to be copyrighted. Finding existing case law wanting on what constituted originality in photography, he established three criteria—rendition, timing and composition—for determining the originality, and thus the copyrightability, of photographs. He also criticized the applicability of the idea-expression dichotomy and its merger doctrine to visual art, including photography. Scholars have in turn expressed concern about some of the implications of the case, while praising it as "the most extensive judicial discussion of photographic copyright in recent years".^[1] It has been cited by other courts deciding whether photographs at issue are eligible for copyright protection, including in cases filed against Rihanna and Beyoncé.