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United States District Court · Northern District of Texas · Dallas Division
Forum on Open Access to Government Records v. The Sixth Floor Museum & the National Archives
Civil Action No. 3:25-CV-2034-B · Decided August 5, 2026
Senior United States District Judge Jane J. Boyle
The bottom line
Leave to amend causes of action 1, 3, and 5 within 14 days. No leave to amend the sixth (dismissed with prejudice) or the seventh (no jurisdiction).
Three parties, one strip of film
How the dispute arose
- The Forum contends today's Zapruder film is an altered version and that the Museum and NARA are complicit in concealing the alterations.
- In May 2025 the Forum published SCAM: The Zapruder Copyright—How the Sixth Floor Museum Continues the Coverup, reproducing Zapruder frames to identify the purported alterations.
- The suit asks the Court to invalidate the Museum's copyright interest and to compel NARA to publish a first-generation copy of the film online.
- The Court takes the complaint's well-pleaded allegations as true at this stage — it decides pleading sufficiency, not truth.
The Zapruder copyright changes hands
Days after the assassination, Zapruder sells all rights to Time, Inc. for royalty payments.
Time registers the copyright; then loses an infringement action on fair-use grounds.
Time transfers its copyright interest back to Zapruder's heirs for a nominal sum.
Heirs, through the family partnership LMH Co., transfer the interest to the Museum; assignment recorded.
The Forum disputes the validity of several of these transfers — the basis of its fifth cause of action.
Two closed doors
To NARA (summer 2024)
- Two FOIA requests for copies of certain frames — both denied.
- The Forum could view slides in NARA's Still Picture Research Room in Maryland, but could not reproduce them without the Museum's written permission.
To the Museum (April 2025)
- License request for frames in SCAM denied; request that the Museum tell NARA it did not oppose the FOIA request also refused.
- A second request through the Museum's website drew no response. The Forum published SCAM weeks later, unlicensed.
Nine causes of action
Not an original work
DISMISSEDWaiver (frames 207–212)
PROCEEDSFraud on the Copyright Office
DISMISSEDAbandonment
PROCEEDSDefective chain of transfers
DISMISSEDMerger of idea and expression
DISMISSEDCopyright used to suppress facts
DISMISSEDFair use (declaratory)
PROCEEDSFOIA reading-room injunction (NARA)
PROCEEDSIs there an "actual controversy"?
- The Declaratory Judgment Act's "actual controversy" tracks Article III. MedImmune replaced the old two-part reasonable-apprehension test with an all-the-circumstances inquiry.
- SanDisk: where a rights holder asserts IP against another's activity and that party claims a right to proceed without a license, the latter has standing.
- An explicit threat of suit is not required — "even an explicit disavowal of future legal action will not eliminate" a controversy where conduct shows preparedness to enforce. Bell v. Accumetric; Poly-America.
The Court finds a live controversy
- The Forum actively uses the frames without a license; the Museum actively claims copyright in them. Not hypothetical.
- The Museum denied licenses, conditioned future requests on agreeing not to challenge validity, and refused to withdraw FOIA objections.
- Its disavowal of impending litigation does not divest standing.
The Museum proposes a closed loop: NARA rejects FOIA requests based on the Museum's copyright, the Museum declines licenses to the requester, and the Museum refrains from threatening or filing suits to prevent anyone from challenging the copyright's validity or scope, ad infinitum.
Though the Court called the Forum's past conduct "questionable," the controversy is substantial and immediate.
Can a court order publication, not just production?
FOIA's Reading-Room Provision, § 552(a)(2), requires agencies to make "frequently requested records" available for public inspection in an electronic format — no request needed. The question is whether the remedial provision, § 552(a)(4)(B), lets a court enforce that duty.
Neither the Supreme Court nor the Fifth Circuit has resolved the question; none of these precedents bind this Court.
Two verbs, two powers
jurisdiction to enjoin the agency from withholding agency records and to order the production of any agency records improperly withheld from the complainant
The "and" links two infinitives, so the modifiers attach only to the second. Answer to NARA's superfluity objection: read the broader "to enjoin" power as excluding what the specific "to order" clause covers.
Three reinforcing reasons
Result: § 552(a)(4)(B) empowers the Court to stop agencies from withholding publication of Reading-Room records — so jurisdiction over the FOIA claim exists.
Originality & waiver
Not an original work
- Damage to frames 154–157 and 207–212 was damage to the physical film; copyright ownership is distinct from ownership of the material object (17 U.S.C. § 202).
- Minor alterations to a few frames do not make the 1963 film unoriginal.
Waiver by affirmative act
- Copyright can be waived by a particular act, even unintentionally, or by inaction.
- Plausible allegation that Time released frames 207–212 into the public domain in the 1960s.
- Caution: the claim reaches only those frames — broader invalidity requires amendment.
Fraud on the Office & abandonment
- A defense can be asserted offensively as a declaratory judgment claim — so that argument fails.
- But the Forum pleaded no more than bare assertions of willfulness or Copyright Office reliance.
- Obvious discrepancies (a one-minute film described as ten seconds; visibly damaged frames) cut against reliance.
- Owners need not sue every infringer — but the Forum alleges no enforcement suit since 1969 amid decades of open, cited infringement.
- Abandonment by inaction requires no direct showing of intent.
- A current licensing program cannot resurrect an already-abandoned copyright.
The chain of transfers holds
- Whether a transfer was ineffective is a legal conclusion, not a well-pleaded fact — the Court looks for supporting facts instead.
- Pleading that documents were "either unsigned or contain illegible signatures" is "little more than pure speculation"; the formal assignment is signed by Time, the owner of the rights conveyed (17 U.S.C. § 204(a)).
- The 1963 agreement was a transfer of all interest for royalties, not a licensing agreement; its bar on further transfers by Zapruder merely reflected that Time then owned the copyright.
- Once the heirs held the copyright, they would be both obligor and obligee — the royalty agreement was necessarily extinguished. "A party cannot contract with . . . himself."
Idea and expression have not merged
- Merger applies only if an idea is susceptible to one form of expression.
- Time, Inc. v. Bernard Geis Associates (S.D.N.Y. 1968) found creativity in Zapruder's choice of camera, film, lens, area, time, and vantage point.
- The same facts could be expressed in various ways, so merger does not apply.
No amount of words describing the "idea" . . . could substitute for the public insight gained through the photographs.
Nimmer's view is not the legal consensus; the Iowa State footnote is non-binding dicta. Those First Amendment concerns belong in a fair use analysis — which is exactly the eighth cause of action.
Dismissed with prejudice because the defect is legal, not factual — repleading would not help.
Suppression of facts & fair use
- The Declaratory Judgment Act does not itself create a cause of action.
- A declaratory claim needs a recognized underlying claim or affirmative defense; the seventh identifies none.
- Dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction — and no leave to amend.
- SCAM's alleged purpose — serious criticism of the film — makes it "the paradigmatic example of fair use under § 107."
- The Museum never addressed the four statutory factors.
- Note: no declaration as to hypothetical future uses of NARA's first-generation copies.
Does the reading room reach pre-1996 records?
NARA's reading would render the 2016 amendment superfluous; the Court's reading leaves the flush language work to do — a one-year buffer for post-1996 records. The Forum has sufficiently alleged that NARA violated FOIA by failing to publish the frames electronically.
Why this order matters
Next: 14 days to amend causes of action 1, 3, and 5. Claims 2, 4, 8, and 9 head toward discovery on waiver, abandonment, fair use, and NARA's reading-room duty.
Citation
Forum on Open Access to Gov't Records, Inc. v. Dallas Cnty. Hist. Found. (The Sixth Floor Museum) & NARA, No. 3:25-CV-2034-B (N.D. Tex. Aug. 5, 2026) (Boyle, J.)
Every quotation, holding, and disposition in this deck is drawn from the Memorandum Opinion and Order (Doc. 32, filed 08/05/26). Allegations described are the Forum's pleadings, accepted as true only for purposes of the motions to dismiss.