Salinger v. Random House, Inc.

Salinger v. Random House, Inc.
Court	United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Full case name	Jerome D. Salinger a/k/a J.D. Salinger v. Random House, Inc. and Ian Hamilton
Argued	December 3, 1986
Decided	January 29, 1987
Citation(s)	811 F.2d 90; 87 A.L.R.Fed. 853; 55 USLW 2426; 1987 Copr. L. Dec. (CCH) ¶ 26,060; 1 U.S.P.Q.2d 1673; 13 Media L. Rep. 1954
Holding
An author has a right to protect the expressive content of his unpublished writings for the term of his copyright, and that right prevails over a claim of fair use under "ordinary circumstances"
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting	Jon O. Newman, Roger Miner
Case opinions
Majority	Newman, joined by Miner
Keywords
copyright infringement, unpublished works

Salinger v. Random House, Inc., 811 F.2d 90 (2d Cir. 1987)^[1] is a United States case on the application of copyright law to unpublished works. In a case about author J. D. Salinger's unpublished letters, the Second Circuit held that the right of an author to control the way in which their work was first published took priority over the right of others to publish extracts or close paraphrases of the work under "fair use". In the case of unpublished letters, the decision was seen as favoring the individual's right to privacy over the public right to information. However, in response to concerns about the implications of this case on scholarship, Congress amended the Copyright Act in 1992 to explicitly allow for fair use in copying unpublished works, adding to 17 U.S.C. 107 the line, "The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."^[2]