On remand from the Supreme Court of the United States, plaintiff Public Affairs Associates, Inc., a Washington, D.C. publishing house, seeks a declaratory judgment adjudicating the rights of defendant Admiral Rickover in two speeches delivered by him on December 11, 1958 and May 28, 1959. The first of these entitled “Education - Our First Line of Defense,” (hereinafter “the Education speech”) was delivered at the Harvard Club in New York City; the second speech, “The Shippingport Atomic Power Station - Lessons From Its Operation,” (hereinafter “the Shippingport speech”) was delivered to the American Public Power Association Convention in Seattle, Washington.
The original action brought by the plaintiff in 1959 concerned twenty-three speeches delivered by Rickover to various groups between [**2] October 20, 1955 and January 16, 1959. Plaintiff was denied permission either to quote from or publish them and received written notice from Rickover’s publisher that action would be brought if plaintiff infringed on Rickover’s legal rights. Plaintiff then instituted an action for declaratory judgment contending the speeches resulted from the Admiral’s official duties, were partially prepared on Government time with Government facilities, were in the public domain, and therefore that Rickover had no literary property therein. The Admiral contended the speeches formed no part of his official duties and that he had a proprietary interest which could be copyrighted to bar others from disseminating them without permission.
At trial in this court, Judge Holtzoff dismissed the complaint, holding that a Government officer has a literary property right in speeches the delivery of which forms no part of his official duties, although the subject matter has a bearing on them. The court concluded that such literary products are not in the public domain but remain the property of the author to the extent he is protected by copyright and the common law and that his rights are not [**3] affected by the fact of Government employment, Public Affairs Associates, Inc. v. Rickover, 177 F. Supp. 601 (D.C.1959).
At the time these speeches were delivered, Admiral Rickover held two titles. Under orders issued in 1947 detaching him from primary duty in the then Bureau of Ships and directing him to report to the Secretary of the Navy, he was assigned [**5] primary duty in the Atomic Energy Commission reactor program and additional duty with the Bureau of Ships. 2 As Assistant Manager for Naval Reactors, Division of Reactor Development, Atomic Energy Commission, he was responsible for the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, an experimental water reactor built for research in civilian nuclear power. As Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Ships for Nuclear Propulsion, he had primary responsibility within the United States Navy for the planning, developing, and constructing of nuclear propulsion plants for naval vessels. A portion of Rickover’s staff also had dual assignments, and information was freely exchanged between the two positions.
2 A memorandum from the Chief of Naval Personnel to Rickover, dated 14 November 1955, interpreted his orders as follows:
Your primary duty, as specified by your orders, is with the Secretary of the Navy for duty with the reactor program of the Atomic Energy Commission. In this duty the Secretary should be your reporting senior in so far as fitness reports are concerned, and as a directly attached member of his staff for duty with the Atomic Energy Commission you are free to deal directly with any agency under the purview of the Secretary of the Navy, as your performance of duty may indicate and require.
Your additional duty with the Chief of the Bureau of Ships is related in a way customarily encountered to give administrative convenience, logistic support, and the necessary authority to originate appropriate measures within the Bureau of Ships in support of and consistent with your primary duty.
In June, 1958 the Harvard Club of New York City invited Rickover to address its members on the general subject of education and he accepted. The speech, typed by the Admiral’s wife at his home, was prepared by him during his evenings over a period of weeks. The final draft, typed by Admiral Rickover’s administrative assistant at his office, bore a copyright notice obtained from the Copyright Office after consultation with Mr. A. H. Helvestine of the Navy Department’s Office of Patent Counsel. The speech was duplicated on Navy Department facilities, apparently for the dual purpose of security review by the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission and for distribution as a press release at the Harvard Club. On the day of delivery Rickover traveled to New York on official business the exact nature of which he cannot recall. He delivered the speech on his own time that evening, and the Harvard Club sent an honorarium therefor to a charity specified by him.
On February 6, 1959 the American Public Power Association invited the Admiral to address its Seattle convention on the Shippingport Power Station. After suggesting education as an alternative topic, Rickover acceded to the association’s request and accepted the invitation. The speech was prepared in the same manner as the Education speech with the exception that copies were furnished by the American Public Power Association and the copyright notice differed slightly. The Admiral traveled to the West Coast on official business, the inspection of potential sites for nuclear facilities. The speech was delivered after working hours and without compensation.
The question as originally stated by Judge Holtzoff remains: May a Government employee who prepares and delivers a speech on his own time, on a subject relating to or bearing directly on his employment, claim a proprietary interest in that speech and copyright it as a protection against its unauthorized use? The fundamental determination in resolving that issue is whether the disputed speeches fall within the purview of Admiral Rickover’s official duties, United States v. First Trust Company of St. Paul, 251 F.2d 686 (8th Cir. 1958); Sawyer v. Crowell Pub. Co., 142 F.2d 497 (2d Cir. 1944); Sherrill v. Grieves, 57 Wash.Law Rep. 286 (S. Ct.D.C.1929); Heine v. Appleton, 11 Fed.Cas. 1031 (No. 6,234) (C.C.S.D.N.Y.1857). Those duties are a matter of contract between Admiral Rickover and the Navy Department, United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp., 289 U.S. 178, 53 S. Ct. 554, 77 L. Ed. 1114 (1933).
Admiral Rickover has asserted that the speeches do not fall within his official duties, and his Government employers have stated categorically that they do not. The narrower assertion that speech making is not enumerated among Admiral Rickover’s official duties remains uncontroverted, nor has there been any evidence that he was directed to make the speeches in issue. Normally, such evidence would be dispositive of the question, but the broad authority vested in Rickover as head of the nuclear propulsion program carries with it the power to act in a variety of ways not enumerated in his formal position description. In this context the duties of a high Government official should not [*449] be narrowly interpreted. Consequently, the circumstances of the preparation and delivery of the speeches and the speeches themselves must be examined to determine whether the Admiral was acting in his public or his private capacity.
Delivery of the speeches had its inception in invitations extended directly to Rickover by two private organizations. There is nothing in the correspondence between these groups and the Admiral to suggest that the invitations were extended to him other than in [**12] his private capacity. Rickover treated them as such and did not consult his superiors, the Secretary of the Navy and the members of the AEC. The speeches were prepared in the privacy of Rickover’s own home. Purely mechanical operations were then performed on the completed manuscripts by his administrative assistant in typing a final draft for duplication, in the case of the Education speech, on Navy facilities. The duplication served a dual purpose, one official, i.e. obtaining security clearance (Rickover’s standard practice no matter what the subject matter of the speech), and the other unofficial, obtaining copies for distribution to the addressees and the press. The additional releases only evidence the Admiral’s recognition that his official position made anything he had to say of interest to the press. Furthermore, the copyright notice borne by both speeches appeared in the name of “H. G. Rickover”, unqualified by any official titles. Both speeches were delivered on the Admiral’s own time. The fact that he was also performing official duties in the area is immaterial; those duties had no connection with the addresses. In short, both speeches were handled as private business [**13] from start to finish.
The absence of a disclaimer clause on the speeches as allegedly required by Navy regulations, Navy REG., art. 1252 § 3 (1948), and the alleged use by Admiral Rickover of certain Department of Defense facilities in preparing the speeches are neither material to the case nor proper subjects of comment for this court.
That Rickover delivered the speeches in his private capacity is further confirmed by their subject matter. The Education speech presents the Admiral’s private views on the danger of the professional educationist’s exclusive control of the public secondary school system. A subject further removed from the Admiral’s official duties is difficult to imagine. 4 The Shippingport speech contains the Admiral’s views on the meaning of the Shippingport experiment to those private individuals, concerned with future development in public power, who comprised the American Public Power Association. The speech was aimed at administrators, not scientists, and the entire content from a technical standpoint had long been public knowledge. As previously stated, Admiral Rickover sought to address the group on the subject of education. The correspondence makes it clear that the American Public Power Association approached the Admiral as a private individual, and had he insisted, would have agreed to an address on education as the Admiral initially desired. The tone and content of the address ultimately delivered confirm the understanding contained in the correspondence.
4 A great deal of evidence was adduced at trial regarding the Admiral’s duties in connection with various nuclear training schools in an attempt to show that the Education speech fell within the purview of his official duties. The connection is tenuous in the extreme. Great emphasis was placed on the Admiral’s remark in the Education speech that “I have been running schools for years,” but it was not pointed out that the remark appears in the context that noneducationists are competent to criticize and shape our public school system. The Admiral further testified that his Navy career has precluded the discharge of his duty to the community as a private citizen and that he has tried to meet this responsibility by devoting a major portion of his private time to studying and speaking on the subject of public education.
In view of the foregoing the court finds that the writing and delivery of the speeches formed no part of Admiral Rickover’s official duties and that the speeches are the Admiral’s private property which he was entitled to copyright.
