Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 Read Online Free

hand, she thinks I’ll fix
Gladly’s
eyes! and runs out into the studio again, and puts on her own glasses and begins sketching
Gladly
wearing eyeglasses.

    “I offer the following eighteen drawings in evidence, Your Honor.”
    “Objections?”
    “None.”
    “All right to offer them all as a single piece of evidence, Mr. Hope?”
    “If it please the Court.”
    “That’s five for the plaintiff,” Santos said.
    “As I understand this,” I said, “when the eyeglasses are placed on Gladly’s nose, covering her eyes…”
    “Yes.”
    “…the eyes look perfectly normal.”
    “Yes. Facing her and looking at her eyes through the glasses …”
    “Could you show us, please?” I said, and handed her the prototype bear with the eyeglasses hanging on a chain around her neck.
     While Gladly watched in glassy cross-eyed expectation, smiling goofily, Lainie opened the glasses, perched them on the bear’s
     snout and little black triangular nose, and hooked them behind her ears. Instantly and magically, the previously crossed eyes
     appeared normal.
    “You put on the glasses,” Lainie said, “and the eyes aren’t crossed anymore.”
    “How do you achieve that effect, Ms. Commins?”
    “I had an optometrist design the glasses for me.”
    “Do you have specifications for these glasses?”
    “I do.”
    “I refer you to exhibit three, the certificate of copyright registration for your bear, and ask you to look at the deposit
     copies accompanying it. Are these the specifications to which you just made reference?”
    “They are.”
    “And did these specifications accompany your application for copyright registration?”
    “They were a part of the application, yes.”
    “And became a part of the copyright protection, didn’t they?”
    “Objection!”
    “Sustained.”
    “Your Honor, if I may…”
    “Yes, Mr. Brackett?”
    “Your Honor,” Brackett said, “it is not Ms. Commins’s business to know or to comment upon copyright law.”
    “I sustained your objection, didn’t I?”
    “Yes, and thank you, Your Honor. But, moreover, Your Honor,
eyeglasses
in themselves are not copyrightable, they are not subject matter for copyright. Copyright does not protect ideas or systems,
     it protects only the
expression
of ideas.”
    “Yes, I know that,” Santos said. “I’m quite familiar with the ‘idea/expression’ distinction.”
    “I’m sure, “Your Honor. But for counsel to suggest that copyright protection of the
bear
extends to the bear’s
eyeglasses
…”
    “Your Honor,” I said, “the eyeglasses are part of the bear’s trade dress. As such…”
    “All of which is a matter of law for the Court to decide. Meanwhile, let’s hear the rest of the testimony.”
    “Thank you, Your Honor,” Brackett said.
    “Ms. Commins,” I said, “do you
own
these specifications?”
    “I paid for their design, yes, in return for all rights to the drawings and the unrestricted use of the design.”
    “Has anyone else, to your knowledge, ever used such a design in this manner before?”
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    “To your knowledge, has anyone ever used such a design in the form of eyeglasses for a stuffed teddy bear?”
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    “Eyeglasses which, when covering the bear’s crossed eyes, seem to
correct
the abnormality? Anyone ever use this design in this fashion before?”
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    “Is this use original with you?”
    “It is.”
    “Did you conceive of this use independently?”
    “I did.”
    “Which goes to the heart of copyright law,” I said. “An original
manner
of expression, independently cre—”
    “Which goes to the heart of a lawyer addressing the Court directly,” Brackett said, “rather than…”
    “Sustained,” Santos said. “Careful, Mr. Hope.”
    There was the fetid smell of mildew and rot, what you found in a lot of these condos built back in the forties and fifties.
     Place was constructed of cinder block painted white, streaks of