Seventh Circuit: A Collection Copyright Does Not Cover Each Article

By Ozan Attas

Photo: cocoparisienne / Pixabay

Owning the copyright in a collection does not mean owning each piece inside it. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit applied that rule on 26 October 2026 in Center for Gestalt Development, Inc. v. Bowman, No. 25-3336, and affirmed summary judgment for two editors who reprinted an unpublished article by the gestalt therapy pioneer Frederick (Fritz) Perls.

Judge Michael Scudder wrote for a panel that also included Judges Pryor and Maldonado. The appeal came from the Southern District of Indiana, No. 1:22-cv-02185.

The facts

Perls wrote an article titled "Psychopathology of Awareness" but never published it. After his death in 1970 the copyright passed to his widow, Laura Perls. In 1991 her estate gave the Center for Gestalt Development exclusive rights to publish a collection of his unpublished manuscripts, including that article. The Center did not publish the collection until 2021.

In the meantime, Charles Bowman and Jean-Marie Robine, two gestalt therapists, built a roughly 200-page book around the 40-page article, adding commentary from other practitioners. It went to print in December 2019 through a French institute and sold some 200 to 300 copies. Before and during the dispute, they sought permission from Perls's children, who had inherited the article's copyright in 1995. The children's representative orally approved the use in exchange for a modest royalty.

In 2021, after the Center sued the children, they settled by assigning the article's copyright to the Center for the length of this lawsuit.

The reasoning

The court started from Sections 103(b) and 201(c) of the Copyright Act. A compilation copyright covers only what the compiler contributed, such as selection and arrangement, not the underlying works. The opinion used the familiar magazine example from New York Times Co. v. Tasini: a publisher can reprint the whole issue but cannot print a freelancer's article on its own without the author's permission.

The parties agreed at oral argument that the 1991 contract transferred rights only in the collection. So until 2021, the Center could not sue anyone who copied the article alone. When it did acquire the article's copyright, it took it subject to the oral license already given to the editors. A nonexclusive license does not need to be in writing, and the royalty paid made it irrevocable.

Any infringement before the license was granted would belong to the children, not the Center, because Section 501(b) only lets an owner sue for infringement that happened while it owned the right. The Center's reliance on Harper & Row and the right of first publication also failed. That case was about fair use, and the question here was ownership.

Why it matters

Publishers, archives and estates often hold rights described loosely as rights in "the papers" or "the collection." This ruling is a reminder that such grants may cover only the compiled work. Anyone who wants to control individual pieces needs an express transfer of those pieces, ideally in writing and with clear dates.

The point carries over to Indonesia. Under Article 16 of the Copyright Law (Law No. 28 of 2014), economic rights move by inheritance, gift, will or written agreement, among other routes, so an anthology or archive deal there raises the same question of who can license a single chapter. Editors on both sides should check who owns each item before relying on a collection-level contract.

Sources

• Opinion, Center for Gestalt Development, Inc. v. Bowman, No. 25-3336 (7th Cir. 26 Oct 2026)
• Justia, opinion and summary
• Benchlight, case page