Yesterday, the Supreme Court held in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Sreet.com, LLC et al., that before a party can file suit for copyright infringement, the copyright must be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Absent statutory exceptions, plaintiffs may not rely on a copyright application to file suit. Fourth Estate (a news organization) had licensed its articles to Wall-Street.com (a news website) and sued Wall-Street.com for copyright infringement when they did not remove the articles from their website after Fourth Estate cancelled their license agreement. However, because the Registrar of Copyrights had not yet registered the copyrights for the articles, the copyrights could not be considered registered. Title 17 U.S.C section 411(a) states that, “no civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until the registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.” SCOTUS held that a copyright claimant my institute a lawsuit for infringement once the Copyright Office registers a copyright and upon registration the owner of a copyright can recover damages for infringement both before and after the registration has occurred.
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