Newspaper Association of America
Presstime
The U.S. Supreme Court has paved the way for lower-court approval of a massive copyright infringement settlement in Reed Elsevier Inc. et al v. Muchnick et al.
The case began more than 10 years ago as multiple lawsuits brought by freelance authors against several owners of online databases and print publishers - including several Newspaper Association of America members - alleging that the authors' works were reproduced electronically without permission being secured first.
The lawsuits were stayed pending the Supreme Court's decision in New York Times Co. v. Tasini, in which copyright liability was affirmed under similar facts.
The lawsuits then resumed and were consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The consolidated complaint alleged that the named plaintiffs each owned at least one copyright that they had registered, but the plaintiff class also included authors who had not registered their works.
Referred to mediation by the court because of the lawsuit's size and complexity, the parties reached a settlement in March 2005 after three years of negotiation.
The District Court approved the settlement, which the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later rejected, holding the registration requirement of Section 411 (a) to be jurisdictional.
The Supreme Court disagreed and held the copyright registration requirement to be more akin to a claim-processing requirement or an element of a claim, rather than a "jurisdictional" condition.
Part of the Supreme Court's analysis was based on the fact that Section 411 (a) is located in a statutory provision separate from those granting federal courts subject-matter jurisdiction over those respective claims; and Section 411 (a) does not clearly state that its registration requirement is jurisdictional. In addition, the Supreme Court noted that Section 411 (a) expressly allows courts to adjudicate infringement claims involving unregistered works in three circumstances:
(1) where the work is not a U.S. work;
(2) where the infringement claim concerns rights of attribution and integrity; or
(3) where the copyright holder attempted to register the work and registration was refused.
The Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case to the Second Circuit for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.
NAA had joined several other media organizations in an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the Second Circuit's decision and permit the settlement to proceed.
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