Intellectual Property Rights

Baker v. Selden

101 U.S. 99 (1879)

Facts

Charles Selden wrote a book explaining a system of bookkeeping.
The book contained explanatory text and blank forms illustrating how the accounting system could be used.
Selden obtained copyright in the book.
Baker later published books using a similar bookkeeping system and forms.
Selden’s estate alleged that Baker had infringed copyright by using forms resembling those in Selden’s book.
Baker argued that he used the accounting method rather than copying Selden’s literary explanation.
The case reached the United States Supreme Court.

Whether copyright in a book explaining a system gives the author exclusive rights over use of that system.
Whether forms necessary to practise a bookkeeping method are protected expression.
How copyright differs from patent protection.

Copyright protects the author’s description or explanation of a system.
It does not protect:
the system itself;
a method of operation;
an art or process;
functional procedures.
Exclusive rights over a new method must ordinarily be obtained through patent law, subject to patentability requirements.
Where particular forms are necessary to use a system, copyright in the explanatory book cannot prevent others from using those forms.
Expression may be unprotected where it merges with the underlying method.

Selden was entitled to prevent others from copying the wording and illustrations of his book as literary expression.
However, publication of the book did not give him exclusive control over the accounting system it described.
The purpose of the forms was functional.
They were tools through which users applied the bookkeeping method.
If Baker could not use substantially similar columns, headings and arrangements, he could not practically use the system.
Granting copyright control over the forms would therefore create a monopoly over the method itself.
Copyright registration does not examine novelty or utility in the way patent law does.
Allowing authors to secure functional monopolies through copyright would bypass the stricter patent system.
The Court distinguished:
copying a book that teaches an accounting method; and
practising the method after learning it.
The former may infringe; the latter ordinarily does not.
Baker was entitled to explain and use the same bookkeeping system in his own way.
Similarity dictated by the function of the system was not protected expression.
This principle later developed into the idea–expression distinction, merger doctrine and exclusion of methods of operation.
The case does not mean that all forms are unprotectable.
A form may contain independently creative visual or textual expression.
Protection cannot, however, extend to elements necessary for performing the underlying procedure.

The Supreme Court held that Selden’s copyright did not grant exclusive rights over the bookkeeping system or forms necessary to use it.
Baker’s use of the system was not copyright infringement.
Patent law, not copyright, was the appropriate route for claiming an exclusive functional method.
Use this case for: copyright in an explanatory work does not confer a monopoly over the system, process or method described in that work.