In this action for an accounting, plaintiffs Jeanette Nicholson and her company Career Assessment Atlanta, Inc. appeal the jury verdict rendered in favor of the defendants James Shafe and his companies Career Training Concepts, Inc. and Sales and Management Training Institute of Atlanta. Pointing to an earlier federal copyright-infringement decision that ruled in part that the parties had produced a joint work, Nicholson and her company complain that the trial court erred in failing to apply the doctrine of collateral estoppel so as to conclude as a matter of law that Nicholson and her company were entitled to 50 percent of the profits that Shafe and his companies received from the joint work. We hold that because the federal ruling was not essential to the outcome of that case, it had no collateral estoppel effect in the present case for an accounting; therefore, we affirm. The critical facts are undisputed. During the 1990s, Nicholson developed an “Interest Inventory” section to assist Shafe in creating a larger career training publication that came to be known and sold by Shafe as “Future Focus.” In 2003, Nicholson sued Shafe in federal court for copyright infringement, alleging that Shafe had infringed on her copyright to the “Interest Inventory.” Shafe defended on two grounds: i Nicholson’s “Interest Inventory” contribution to “Future Focus” was under a “work made for hire” arrangement, in which Nicholson was fully compensated for her work and which therefore entitled Shafe to all the rights comprised in the copyright on “Future Focus” see 17 USCS § 201 b; and ii at most, “Future Focus” was a joint work, meaning that Shafe was at least a co-owner of the copyright in the work and as such could not be liable for copyright infringement. See 17 USCS § 201 a. See also Weissmann v. Freeman 1 “an action for infringement between joint owners will not lie because an individual cannot infringe his own copyright”. Shafe moved for summary judgment on these grounds.
In granting Shafe’s motion for summary judgment in an unpublished decision, the federal court relied on the second ground, holding that Future Focus was “a joint work.” Accordingly, the court reasoned that because the Shafe defendants in that action had “a copyright interest in a portion of the work and were exercising their authority to exploit the work, Plaintiffs may not bring a copyright infringement action against Defendants.”
