''Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp.'', 309 U.S. 390 (1940), was a

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point ...

case in which the Court held, in the case of an unauthorized adaptation, courts may elect to award only a portion of an infringer's profits to the plaintiff. The proportion that the defendant is entitled to keep is in proportion to the amount of original creative work that went into the adaptation, and the court may be assisted in determining that by expert witness testimony. The Court found that awarding more to the plaintiff "would be to inflict an unauthorized penalty." The case involved Metro-Goldwyn using material from the 1930 play ''Dishonored Lady'' by Edward Sheldon and

Margaret Ayer Barnes Margaret Ayer Barnes (April 8, 1886, Chicago, Illinois – October 25, 1967, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Biography Margaret Ayer grew up the youn ...

for the 1932 film ''

Letty Lynton ''Letty Lynton'' is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film starring Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery and Nils Asther. The film was directed by Clarence Brown and based on the 1931 novel of the same name by Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes; the novel ...

''. It was brought before various courts before ending up with the Supreme Court, which awarded one fifth of the profits.

References

External links

* 1940 in United States case law United States copyright case law United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Hughes Court {{SCOTUS-case-stub