{"id":406,"date":"2019-03-04T13:42:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T18:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/?p=406"},"modified":"2019-03-04T13:42:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T18:42:26","slug":"supreme-court-clarifies-two-small-but-significant-copyright-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/?p=406","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Clarifies Two Small but Significant Copyright Question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Today the Supreme Court clarified two small but significant copyright issues, relying on the express words of the copyright statute in one, but deviating slightly in the other.\u00a0 In <em>Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC<\/em>, [17\u2013571] the Supreme Court held that \u00a7411 explicitly requires that a plaintiff actually have a copyright registration before bringing a copyright suit.  However, in <em>Rimini Street, Inc., v. Oracle USA, Inc.<\/em>, [17\u20131625] the Supreme Court held that the term the term \u201cfull costs\u201d in \u00a7505 of the Copyright Act simply means the \u201ccosts\u201d specified in the general costs statute codified at 28 U.S.C. \u00a7\u00a71821 and 1920, and does not include a party\u2019s other costs, in effect giving no weight to &#8220;full&#8221; in the statute. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In <em>Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC,<\/em> Fourth Estate sued for infringement of its news articles from Wall-Street&#8217;s failed to remove them from its website after canceling the parties\u2019 license agreement. Fourth Estate had filed applications to register the articles with the Copyright Office, but the Register of Copyrights had not acted on those applications. The District Court dismissed the complaint because 17 U. S. C. \u00a7411(a) provides that \u201cno civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until . . . registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.\u201d The Eleventh Circuit affirmed, holding that registration has not been made under \u00a7411(a) until the Copyright Office actually registers the copyright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Supreme Court affirmed, agreeing that registration occurs, and a copyright claimant may commence an infringement suit, when the Copyright Office registers the copyright.  This resolves a split in the circuits, as the Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits and a smattering of district courts held that merely filing a complete application was sufficient, while the Tenth and Eleventh Circuits, and other district courts maintained that \u201cregistration\u201d in 17 USC \u00a7411 meant actual registration. Todays decision also does not leave copyright owners in too difficult position.\u00a0 The Copyright Office has a process for expedited copyright registration (https:\/\/www.copyright.gov\/help\/faq\/faq-special.html), and the Supreme Court reiterated that the copyright owner can still recover pre-registration damages.\u00a0 At most this ruling should slow a copyright plaintiff a week or two, and cost a few hundred dollars more \u2013 barely a blip for a plaintiff heading off to federal court to enforce its rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In <em>Rimini Street, Inc., v. Oracle USA, Inc.,<\/em> after a jury awarded Oracle damages for copyright infringement, the district court added Oracle\u2019s fees and costs, including $12.8 million for litigation expenses such as expert witnesses, e-discovery, and jury consulting. \u00a0The Ninth Circuit affirmed the award, acknowledging that it covered expenses beyond the six categories of costs enumerated in general federal statutes authorizing district courts to award costs (28 U. S. C. \u00a7\u00a71821 and 1920).\u00a0 The Ninth Circuit explained that the additional award was appropriate because 17 U. S. C. \u00a7505 gives federal district courts discretion to award \u201cfull costs\u201d to a party in copyright litigation. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that Sections 1821 and 1920 define what the term \u201ccosts\u201d encompasses in subject-specific federal statutes such as \u00a7505. \u00a0The Supreme Court said that while Congress may authorize awards of expenses beyond the six categories specified in the general costs statutes, the courts may not award litigation expenses that are not specified in \u00a7\u00a71821 and 1920 absent explicit authority. The Court said that its precedents have consistently adhered to that approach, and the Court rejected Oracles arguments that this ignored Congress\u2019s use of &#8220;full&#8221; to modify costs in  \u00a7505. 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the Supreme Court clarified two small but significant copyright issues, relying on the express words of the copyright statute in one, but deviating slightly in the other.\u00a0 In Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC, [17\u2013571] the Supreme &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/?p=406\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipmanagement.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}