Review & Herald
Ellen G. White is not guilty of copyright infringement or plagiarism. This is the opinion of Vincent L. Ramik, senior partner of Diller, Ramik & Wight, Ltd., a lawyer who practices patent, trademark, and copyright law in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Ramik undertook to research Mrs. White’s writings after Warren L. Johns, chief legal officer of the General Conference, retained the services of Diller, Ramik & Wight last April because of allegations made against Mrs. White by Walter Rea, at that time pastor of the Long Beach, California, church.
Ramik, a Roman Catholic, spent more than 300 hours researching about 1,000 relevant cases in American legal history. He concluded his 27-page legal opinion* with an unequivocal declaration: “Based upon our review of the facts and legal precedents . . . Ellen White was not a plagiarist, and her works did not constitute copyright infringement/piracy.”
The legal report was delivered to Johns’s office late last month. It responds specifically to six questions:
Was there a Federal copyright law between the years 1850 (when Ellen White first published) and 1915 (the year of her death) granting literary property rights to authors? If so, what was the essence of such law? Did it substantially differ from copyright law in 1981?
Was the payment of royalties by publishers a standard legal and business practice at that time?
Were licensing agreements for the use of literary property standard business practice at that time?
Was there a standard literary practice to use quotation marks, footnotes, and bibliographical citations in literary works that utilized the literary property of other authors?
What case law is available between 1850 and 1915 that might suggest the extent of an author’s protection against literary piracy?
Is there anything within the published works of Ellen G. White that would suggest literary piracy (Federal copyright infringement) within the standards existing between 1850 and 1915?
Ellen White’s literary output reportedly approximated 25 million words during a writing career spanning nearly 70 years. A number of the 90-plus books, including compilations, from her pen in print today have been translated into as many as 100 languages.
The fact that Mrs. White incorporated quotations and paraphrased materials from other authors (principally historians of the Reformation era and contemporary nineteenth-century devotional writers) in her books and articles has itself never been at issue. She, during her lifetime, and church officials, subsequently, have repeatedly acknowledged such use. But Walter Rea undertook the task of identifying the various sources of that literary borrowing. This study demonstrated that Mrs. White had borrowed more extensively than had been estimated previously.
Books not copyrighted
Ramik discovered that many of the books from which Mrs. White borrowed were not in fact copyrighted. But, he continued, even if they had been thus protected by law, her utilization of phraseology and even multiple paragraphs did not in law constitute copyright infringement, nor plagiarism.
“If the issues had been court-tested between 1850 and 1915, Ellen G. White emphatically would not have been convicted of copyright infringement,” conconcluded Ramik.
The law specialist found it ironic that Mrs. White’s sternest critics themselves offer “the best evidence available” to support a position of noninfringement.
“Nowhere,” Ramik pointed out, “have we found the books of Ellen G. White to be virtually the ‘same plan and character throughout’ as those of her predecessors. Nor have we found, or have critics made reference to, any intention of Ellen White to supersede . . . [other authors] in the market with the same class of readers and purchasers.” Instead, she invariably introduced considerable new matter to that which she borrowed, going far beyond mere “colorable deviations,” and, in effect, created an altogether new literary work.
Furthermore, “the sheer ‘compilation’ of the works of Ellen G. White necessarily reflects her labor and skill. So long as she did not (and the evidence clearly establishes that she did not) draw from any prior works ‘to a substantial degree,’ she remains well within the legal bounds of ‘fair use.’
“Moreoever, so long as the materials were selected from a variety of sources, and were ‘arranged and combined with certain passages of the text of the original work, and in a manner showing the exercise of discretion, skill, learning, experience, and judgment,’ the use was ‘fair.’”
Intent is a chief ingredient that must be demonstrated in plagiarism cases; and Ramik believes he has proved not only from Mrs. White’s own published statements but indeed from the admission of some of her critics themselves, that she did not intend to defraud in the borrowing of other literary productions.
“Proceeding with but the highest motivations and intentions,” said Ramik, Mrs. White, in fact “modified, exalted, and improved” much of that which others wrote, in a manner entirely ethical, as well as legal.
“It is impossible to imagine that the intention of Ellen G. White, as reflected in her writings and the unquestionably prodigious effort involved therein, was anything other than a sincerely motivated and unselfish effort to place the understandings of Biblical truths in a coherent form for all to see and comprehend.
“Most certainly, the nature and content of her writings had but one hope and intent, namely, the furthering of mankind’s understanding of the word of God.”
In his summation, Ramik concluded, “Considering all factors necessary in reaching a just conclusion on this issue, it is submitted that the writings of Ellen G. White were conclusively unplagiaristic.”