By Ralph K. Helge
Church legal counsel
PASADENA--As many of you know, the Philadelphia Church of God (hereafter PCG), produced 50,000 unauthorized and unlicensed copies of the entire Mystery of the Ages book written by Herbert W. Armstrong.
The only modifications they made from the one published by the Worldwide Church of God was that they deleted the name of the WCG from the copyright notice, deleted a notice that prohibited copying of the book and deleted a suggested reading list of booklets that could be requested from the WCG.
The WCG carefully reviewed this conduct, and concluded that it could not just stand by and simply ignore the confiscation of its assets. As a consequence, it felt compelled to file a lawsuit in federal court against PCG for violation of copyright.
From the outset, the court held what, in my opinion, was an erroneous view of the law. As a consequence, we were apprehensive that this was going to have a negative impact on the outcome of the case.
In fact, from early on in the case, we even requested that we be permitted to take the legal contentions of the District Court and PCG to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for review.
This we felt would bring about an early correction of these erroneous views and save a considerable amount of time and attorneys fees for the parties.
However, PCG's attorneys opposed this and hence the court refused to permit such an early appeal.
In order to bring the matter to the quickest resolution possible, we filed a motion for what is called a summary judgment.
This is a procedure whereby it is contended that there are no factual issues, only legal ones, and that the legal issues were in favor of the WCG. PCG filed a cross motion.
On Feb. 8, our apprehensions came to pass, and the court granted PCG's motion for summary judgment, which authorized PCG to copy Mystery of the Ages for the time being.
We are of the firm opinion that the legal grounds articulated by the court are not in accord with the existing law.
In fact, the court admitted to this, but went on to pronounce its application of the law to this case as being somewhat unique.
It should be understood that this decision does not end the matter.
It is the WCG's firm intent to appeal the same to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in order to correct the erroneous ruling.
Some have asked why the WCG wants to prevent the PCG, or anyone else for that matter, from copying Mystery of the Ages.
The answers are threefold:
1. A copyright is property. It is appropriate stewardship to protect the assets of the WCG.
2. PCG did not request permission to print Mystery of the Ages or a license to publish. They simply confiscated the same. Hence, it was necessary to defend against such conduct.
3. The WCG has been discussing plans for the thousands of copyrights that it holds of WCG's literature. It could not sit back and let PCG simply come in and confiscate whatever it could get its hands on, and thereby disrupt all this planning and future control and direction of such literature by the WCG.
Although the intent of this article is to explain some underlying aspects of a lawsuit, nevertheless, I do not want to burden it with legal arguments.
In our opinion, I feel that the principle of the legal and spiritual contentions were correctly summed up by Judge Wendell A. Miles of the U.S. District Court, in his decision regarding a copyright case.
In his case, a religious radio station played religious songs without paying a royalty to the copyright holder.
Judge Miles stated that in doing so, they "violated the commandment, Thou shalt not steal."
Even a secular judge recognized that the taking of somebody's copyright without paying for it, indeed without even offering to pay for it, was a violation of God's law.
Here we believe that the PCG is in violation of both the commandment of God and the copyright law of the United States.
We will keep you posted from time to time as the appeal progresses. We request your prayers that the rights of the WCG be vindicated and the untoward action of the PCG be exposed.
Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 1999