Martin v. Little, Brown and Co.

Facts

On September 28, 1976, Martin sent a letter to Bantam Books, advising them that portions of a book entitled “How to Buy Stocks” had been plagiarized by the authors of a later book entitled “Planning Your Financial Future.” Martin offered to provide a copy of the book in which Martin had highlighted the plagiarized passages with references to the pages and paragraphs of the book from which they had been copied. On October 21, 1976, Robin Paris, Editorial Assistant of Little, invited Martin to send his copy. Martin did so, and Little acknowledged receipt in writing. Afterwards, Martin made inquiries about the investigation but received no response. Once Martin learned that Little was pursuing a claim for copyright infringement, he demanded compensation for his services. Little denied that it had contracted with Martin or was otherwise obligated to compensate him. Nevertheless, Little offered an honorarium in the form of a check for two hundred dollars, which Martin didn’t cash. Instead, he filed suit to recover one-third of the recovery from the copyright infringement lawsuit.