Fourth Estate Pub. Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC

Background

Fourth Estate is a news organization that licensed articles to Wall-Street.com, a news website owned by Jerrold Burden. The license required Wall-Street to remove Fourth Estate’s content when the agreement ended. Wall-Street canceled the license but continued to display the articles. Fourth Estate filed applications to register those works with the Copyright Office and then sued for infringement while the Office had not yet acted. The trial court dismissed the suit and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed; the Copyright Office later refused registration of those articles. The Supreme Court took the case to decide when registration is “made.”

Reasoning

The central question was whether registration is complete when an author files a proper application or only after the Copyright Office examines and registers (or refuses) the claim. The Court concluded that registration occurs only when the Register acts. It relied on nearby statutory language that allows suit when registration is refused, other provisions that separate filing from registration, and the continued availability of preregistration and live-broadcast exceptions. The Court noted that once the Register rules, a copyright owner may seek damages for past infringement and seek injunctions to stop ongoing copying.

Real world impact

Under this decision, creators and publishers generally cannot start infringement suits while their registration applications are pending; they must await the Copyright Office’s decision. Limited exceptions exist for preregistration and live broadcasts, and the Office offers expedited “special handling” for some litigation. The Court acknowledged processing delays and the average seven-month current wait, but said administrative delays do not change the statutory rule and that Congress, not courts, must address backlog concerns.