Minden Pictures, Inc. v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Minden Pictures, Inc., is a stock photography company that serves as the licensing agent for dozens of photographers, authorizing third parties to use copyrighted photographs. Under the terms of its contracts with the photographers, Minden has the exclusive right to act as their licensing agent, but the photographers reserve their rights to use the photographs themselves and to license them to others.

Minden brought an infringement suit under the Copyright Act against John Wiley & Sons, Inc., a textbook publisher, alleging that Wiley had substantially exceeded the scope of the licenses granted by Minden by publishing far more copies of books containing the photographs than permitted under the licenses. The question in this appeal is whether Minden, as a licensing agent, has statutory standing under the Copyright Act to bring an infringement suit based on alleged violations of the terms of its licenses to Wiley. The district court held that Minden does not have standing under the Act. We disagree and reverse.

I. Background

Minden Pictures, Inc., (“Minden”) is a 26-year-old stock photography company based in Watsonville, California. According to Richard Minden, its…