Seventh Circuit holds that the Center for Gestalt Development's copyright in a manuscript collection gave it no copyright in one article

What the court decided

A Seventh Circuit panel of Judges Scudder, Pryor, and Maldonado heard argument on September 16, 2026, and decided Center for Gestalt Development, Inc. v. Bowman, No. 25-3336, on October 26, 2026. Judge Scudder wrote for the court. The appeal came from the Southern District of Indiana, No. 1:22-cv-02185, Judge Richard L. Young. The court affirmed the district court's entry of summary judgment for Charles Bowman and Jean-Marie Robine on the Center's copyright infringement claims. (Slip op. 1 to 2, 13.)

The opinion opens with the rule it applied: "the Copyright Act of 1976 works differently, providing that the copyright owner of an aggregate work has no automatic right to publish any of its components standing alone." (Slip op. 1.)

The background, as the opinion describes it

According to the opinion, the article "Psychopathology of Awareness" was written by the pioneer of gestalt therapy, a form of psychotherapy, who never published it. In 1991, his wife's estate conveyed to the Center exclusive rights to publish a collection of his unpublished manuscripts that included the article. The agreement contemplated publication within a year, but the Center published the collection in 2021. Bowman, a gestalt therapy practitioner and professor in Indiana, and Robine, a gestalt therapist in France, published the 40-page article with commentary chapters in a 200-page book through a French institute that Robine founded. The book went to print in December 2019, sales began in February 2020, and the institute sold some 200 or 300 copies, including to buyers in the United States. (Slip op. 5 to 6.)

The opinion says the Center told Bowman and Robine by email in November 2019 not to publish and refused their offer of royalties and co-publisher credit. The author's two children, who inherited the copyright in the article in 1995, told Bowman and Robine through a legal representative in 2019 or 2020 that they could use the article in the book for a modest royalty. After the Center sued the children in late 2020, they settled by assigning their interest in the article's copyright to the Center until this suit concludes. The Center sued Bowman, Robine, and the French institute in May 2021 in federal court in Pennsylvania. After motions to dismiss and transfer, the case moved to the Southern District of Indiana. The institute never appeared, and the Center obtained a default judgment against it that, the court said, plays no part in the appeal. (Slip op. 6 to 7.)

The court's reasoning

The court relied on 17 U.S.C. 103(b), which limits the copyright in a compilation to the material the compiler contributed, and 17 U.S.C. 201(c), under which the copyright in each separate contribution to a collective work is distinct from the copyright in the collective work as a whole, citing New York Times Co. v. Tasini, 533 U.S. 483 (2001). The parties stipulated at oral argument that the 1991 agreement transferred rights only in the collection, not in the article standing alone. The court held that the Center therefore could not prevail on an infringement claim against anyone who copied the article rather than the collection, and noted that the only thing the book had in common with the collection was the article. (Slip op. 3 to 4, 8 to 9.)

When the Center acquired the article's copyright in 2021, the court held, it did so subject to the oral license, which issued no later than 2020. The court said the oral agreement fell outside the writing requirement of 17 U.S.C. 204(a) because it granted only permission to use the article, not ownership, and section 101 removes a nonexclusive license from that requirement, citing I.A.E., Inc. v. Shaver, 74 F.3d 768 (7th Cir. 1996). It said the royalties paid made the license irrevocable. For any infringement before the license, the court said the proper plaintiffs were the children, not the Center, because under 17 U.S.C. 501(b) an owner may sue only for infringement committed while it is the owner, and nothing in the 2021 settlement indicates that the Center acquired their rights to sue for 2019 and 2020. (Slip op. 9 to 11.)

The court rejected the Center's two responses. It held that the Center had not created a jury question about the existence of the oral license, pointing to a royalty check and a later email that corroborated the representative's sworn declaration, and said that whether the license issued in 2019 or 2020, it preceded the 2021 acquisition. It also held that Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985), which addressed the right of first publication in a fair use analysis under 17 U.S.C. 107, does not answer whether the owner of a compilation also owns one of its components; the answer comes from sections 103(b) and 201(c). (Slip op. 11 to 13.)