Uneeda Doll Co., Inc. v. P & M Doll Co., Inc., Salvatore Paganello and Joseph Paganello

Plaintiff appeals from an order in an action for copyright infringement denying a preliminary injunction.

Appellant has copyrights on a doll with one arm around a red and white striped pole and on a display box for the doll. It claims that appellee is infringing appellant’s copyrights by making and selling a doll in a display box with its arm around a red and white striped pole.

It is well settled that there can be no copyright on an “idea” itself but only on the tangible “expression” of the idea. Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 25 L.Ed. 841 (1879).

As Judge Learned Hand said in Peter Pan Fabrics,…