The “Rage” Continues: Who Owns the Bob Woodward Trump Interview Recordings?
The “Rage” Continues: Who Owns the Bob Woodward Trump Interview Recordings?
In January 2023, Former President Donald Trump sued veteran journalist Bob Woodward over the release of audio recordings coming from interviews Trump gave with Woodward. If this suit makes it to court, key questions impacting journalism will be addressed, including who owns an interview, assuming an interview is copyrightable.
Between December 2019 and August 2020, veteran journalist Bob Woodward interviewed then-President Donald Trump nineteen times, assembling several hours of audio for what Trump claimed to agree that the audio would be used for the journalist’s book, “Rage.” Woodward’s book focused on the former President’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, racial unrest, relationships with high-level U.S. military officials, and relationships with leadership in Russia and North Korea.
In January, the former President sued Woodward over releasing the audio recordings, claiming Woodward released the recordings without Trump’s consent. Additionally, Trump alleges Woodward, published by Simon & Schuster and its parent company, Paramount Global, “unlawfully usurped” Trump’s copyright interests and other rights by publishing an audiobook featuring raw audio from Woodward’s interviews with Trump. Woodward and Simon & Schuster said in a joint statement soon after filing the complaint that the lawsuit was without merit.
The audiobook using the audio, titled “The Trump Tapes,” sold over two million copies at $24.99 a piece, explaining how Trump’s team calculated the damage amount to $50 million. The audiobook includes twenty interviews Woodward conducted with Trump, one conducted during the 2016 campaign and the other nineteen conducted during Trump’s presidency. Trump’s 31-page complaint, which was filed in a federal district court in Pensacola, Florida, raises multiple issues, including what makes a work copyrightable and if an interview is copyrightable, who owns it.
Works are copyrightable as soon as the author fixes the original work in a tangible form or expression. Works are original when they are created independently by a human author and have a minimal degree of creativity. Works are fixed when captured in a sufficiently permanent medium so that they can be observed, communicated, or reproduced over a short period of time.
Case law exists to address the question of copyright interests in interviews. In Taggart v. WMAQ Channel 5 Chicago, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois held that the plaintiff could not copyright ideas he expressed in an interview, and even if he could, his failure to get a copyright meant the copyright action could not be sustained. In Johnson v. Magnolia Pictures, LLC, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York held that the plaintiff could not establish a legitimate claim for copyright infringement because she did not register any audiotape of a recorded interview. Importantly, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit established a two-part test for plaintiffs to state a claim for copyright infringement. First, the plaintiff must plausibly allege ownership of the copyright. Second, the plaintiff must plausibly allege copying of constituent elements of the work that are original. Should Trump successfully get his complaint into a federal court in Florida, Woodward could use the Second Circuit’s test to argue Trump must prove he owned the work that he and Woodward produced.
Amanda Reid, a professor of law and journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, commented that copyrightable content can come both from the interviewer and interviewee, especially in the recording of oral histories. Critically, ownership of the interview could come down to the intent to claim the right of the oral history when it was being created. Trump’s complaint focuses on that element, stating in his complaint that if Woodward intended to create an oral history to claim rights, he would have Trump sign over his rights as part of the standard procedures of conducting the interview, and this procedure would have been done after each interview. If, however, there was no agreement, the interviewer and interviewee may have joint ownership over the tapes. The complaint does not state whether those agreements were made before each interview, but the defense claims those agreements were made.
The implications of this suit will be vast, especially for journalists, as a ruling in this case could settle questions over copyright interests in interviews when participants disagree on who owns the rights. The complaint, however, needs to get to court first, and Trump’s decision to file in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida is questionable, given Trump is a resident of Palm Beach, Florida, which is in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The only connection to the Northern District is that one of the defendants, Paramount Global, is registered as a foreign-profit corporation in Florida with a registered agent in Tallahassee. Should this case get into court, Trump will likely need to convince the court that he does own the interview. A ruling on this case could also establish a rule addressing whether interviewers and interviewees need to have others sign over the rights of an interview to claim copyright interest. If previous case law serves any indication, however, Trump will deal with an uphill battle convincing the court he has copyright interest over the interview since his complaint fails to state he ever registered the interview for copyright.
Originally Written in February of 2023.