NASHVILLE, Tenn. – In a landmark decision, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee decided yesterday that the registry of pedigrees belonging to the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ & Exhibitors’ Association (TWHBEA) qualified for copyright protection and that a competing organization, the National Walking Horse Association (NWHA), committed copyright infringement when it used and copied information from TWHBEA’s certificates of registration.
In 1935, TWHBEA created and established a registry to record the pedigrees of Tennessee Walking Horses. The registry contains more than 70 years worth of unbroken ancestral lineage and approximately 430,000 horses, giving it a market share of 98 percent of the registered Tennessee Walking Horses.
As noted in the opinion, NWHA launched a competing registry of Tennessee Walking Horse pedigrees in July 2004. NWHA’s exclusive sources of pedigree information were TWHBEA’s certificates, the Canadian registry, and canned software that NWHA purchased for $100. NWHA explicitly invited applicants to attach their TWHBEA registry certificates and then copied the horses’ pedigrees, markings, colorings, and even TWHBEA’s unique numbering designations.