Stern

MEMORANDUM *

Nancy Sinatra and her associated businesses (collectively, “Sinatra”) jointly ap *778 peal the district court’s decision not to award them attorneys’ fees after granting their summary judgment motion. Phil Stern cross-appeals the district court’s decision to award summary judgment in Sinatra’s favor. The district court found that Stern did not possess a valid copyright in the photograph “F.S. in Corridor Walking Away” at the time he initiated this copyright infringement action, but it declined to award attorneys’ fees in Sinatra’s favor. We have jurisdiction, and we affirm.

It is undisputed that Stern took the photograph in 1954 or 1955, and that the photograph appeared in Look magazine in 1957 with a credit to “Phil Stern, Globe.” There is no evidence permitting a reasonable inference that the publication in Look was unauthorized. As Stern testified under oath, “this is authorized by Globe Photos, which is automatically authorized by me since I made them my agent and they would sell my — what I would call my file photos.” Stern’s twenty-eight year statutory copyright term under the 1909 Copyright Act began to run from the time of the 1957 publication in Look and…