Woods v. PRO VIDEO PRODUCTIONS, INC.

447 F. Supp. 2d 1022, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60167, 2006 WL 2472141
CourtDistrict Court, D. Minnesota
DecidedAugust 24, 2006
DocketCivil File 05-987 (MJD/RLE)
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 447 F. Supp. 2d 1022 (Woods v. PRO VIDEO PRODUCTIONS, INC.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Woods v. PRO VIDEO PRODUCTIONS, INC., 447 F. Supp. 2d 1022, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60167, 2006 WL 2472141 (mnd 2006).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OF LAW & ORDER

DAVIS, District Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

This matter is before the Court on Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. [Docket No. 20] The Court heard oral argument on July 12, 2006.

II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

A. Parties

Plaintiff Daniel Woods and Defendants Tom Livingston and Jack Lind are filmmakers. Defendant Pro Video Productions, Inc. (“Pro Video”), is a company that was formed by Livingston and Lind as a partnership in 1982 and incorporated in 1989. Pro Video and Woods worked together on several commercial projects in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, and again during the period 1997 through 2002.

B. Project Fatal Choices/NHTSA Project

In 1997, two representatives from the Minnesota Department of Transportation (“MDOT”) returned from a trip to Australia, where they had viewed an Australian public road safety ad campaign. John Bray, with MDOT, contacted Woods seeking to meet with Woods and Pro Video regarding mimicking high impact public service announcements from Australia.

Woods, Livingston, and Lind began planning such a large-scale campaign dubbed Project Fatal Choices. They hoped to create a project that would generate approximately three million dollars in revenue. Woods claims that, after the initial meeting, he began writing scripts and thinking about how to organize the project. He also contacted persons involved in the Australian public service announcement project.

Woods and Pro Video soon determined that the State of Minnesota could not fund such a large project and began to seek private funding and financial backing from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”). However, the NHTSA rejected their unsolicited proposal.

Pro Video’s lobbyist, Sante Esposito, informed them that the NHTSA might entertain a smaller scale research project, so they prepared a new proposal for the NHTSA. By June 2001, Woods had provided a summary of his research to Defendants.

Before awarding the contract, the NHTSA required Pro Video to provide a statement of work based on an NHTSA template. Based on that template, Woods created a draft Statement of Work, which he shared with others at Pro Video. On July 12, 2001, Woods e-mailed a draft Statement of Work to Doug Gurin at the NHTSA with the comment, “Please find attached a draft Statement of Work which incorporates your key input of yesterday.” Gurin then revised the draft Statement of Work “with a heavy hand.”

In February 2002, Woods and Livingston traveled to Washington to meet with the NHTSA. After the meeting, which included Woods, Livingston, and Esposito, the NHTSA revised the Statement of Work to reflect the meeting discussion.

*1027 On August 1, 2002, the NHTSA awarded Pro Video a contract for hire for approximately $180,000 for a research project studying whether the Australian ad campaign caused a significant reduction in highway traffic deaths (“Cooperative Agreement”)- By the time the NHTSA awarded the contract, Pro Video and Woods had a falling out, and Woods was no longer participating in the project. The NHTSA set the boundaries of the research project, including whom to contact in Australia and which interview questions to ask. Livingston, Gudrun Hartig, a Pro Video employee, and Alex Wagenaar, traveled to Australia for three weeks to interview those involved in the Australian ad campaign. The final research report was principally authored by Hartig, based on the interviews and the statistical information that she had gathered in Australia. Pro Video’s final research report for the NHTSA was entitled “Impact of Traffic Safety Paid Advertising Campaigns in Victoria and New South Wales, Australia, 1989-2001” (“Final Report”).

C. Changing Faces of Aviation/FAA Project

In 1999, Livingston heard Congressman Oberstar give a speech on improvements to the air transportation system. This gave Livingston the idea of creating a documentary on how the air transportation system had become safer and more efficient. The day of the speech, Livingston had lunch with Woods and discussed turning the speech into a possible project. Livingston also discussed the idea with Pro Video lobbyist, Esposito, who was then working for Pro Video on the NHTSA project. The idea for a four-part documentary, dubbed “Changing Face of Aviation,” was submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) in 2001.

After September 11, 2001, the FAA was less interested in funding a substantial documentary. However, it did indicate that it might fund a shorter documentary dealing with efficiency improvements in aviation.

In February 2002, Woods and Livingston met with the FAA in Washington, D.C., regarding the smaller scale project. Before the meeting, Livingston and Woods met with Esposito in his office and revised the treatment and production plan. At the meeting with the FAA, Livingston submitted a proposal, including the revised treatment, to the FAA.

On April 18, 2002, and again on April 25, 2002, Woods submitted newly revised treatments to the FAA for a twenty-to-thirty-minute video with a budget of $275,000. These revisions reflected comments by the FAA.

In July 2002, Pro Video obtained an FAA contract for $275,000 to create a twenty-five-minute documentary on efficiency improvements in the air transportation system. Before the FAA awarded the contract, Pro Video and Woods had a falling out and Woods was no longer involved in the project.

The final documentary was based on a treatment created by filmmaker John Hanson, written after the FAA contract was executed. The documentary was filmed in five or six different locations after site visits and interviews.

D. Dispute Between Woods and Pro Video

Throughout the NHTSA and FAA projects, Woods wanted Pro Video to create a business structure with him to carry out the projects. However, Defendants did not want to enter into a business structure until funding was approved and the government contracts were awarded.

Woods claims that by November 1, 2000, he had spent over nine hundred hours on the NHTSA and FAA projects. As he *1028 worked on the projects, he copyrighted documents representing his background research.

On September 30, 2001, Woods wrote a letter to Livingston, as president of Pro Video, stating:

The absence of a well-defined, explicit business agreement as the foundation for our work together on Project Fatal Choices and ‘The Changing Face of Aviation’ is unacceptable to me.
* * * * * *
This letter constitutes notice to you that my intellectual property, or any work based on or deriving from my intellectual property, may not be used by Pro Video Productions, Inc., or any other individual or entity, for any purpose, without my specific written agreement. I have previously provided you with complete sets of the materials submitted by me for copyright registration....

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447 F. Supp. 2d 1022, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 60167, 2006 WL 2472141, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/woods-v-pro-video-productions-inc-mnd-2006.