Practice Management Information Corp. v. American Medical Association
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
121 F.3d 516 (1997)
- Written by Jenny Perry, JD
Facts
In 1977, Congress directed the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) to establish a uniform code for identifying medical procedures on Medicare and Medicaid claim forms. Instead of designing a new code, the HCFA contracted with the American Medical Association (association) (defendant) to use the association’s coding system called the Physician’s Current Procedural Terminology (CPT). The agreement gave the HCFA a nonexclusive, royalty-free, and irrevocable license to use, publish, and distribute the CPT. In exchange, the HCFA agreed not to use any other system for reporting physicians’ services and agreed to require the use of the CPT in programs administered by the HCFA. Practice Management Information Corporation (Practice Management) (plaintiff) was a publisher and distributor of medical books that purchased copies of the CPT from the association for resale. After being refused a volume discount it had requested, Practice Management sought a declaratory judgment that the association’s copyright in the CPT was invalid because, among other reasons, the association’s agreement with the HCFA constituted copyright misuse. The district court granted partial summary judgment to the association and preliminarily enjoined Practice Management from publishing the CPT. Practice Management appealed.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Browning, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 832,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,500 briefs, keyed to 994 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.