Reed Elsevier, Inc., et al. v. Muchnick et al.
559 U.S. (2010)
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Rule of Law:
The copyright registration requirement under 17 U.S.C. § 411(a) is a nonjurisdictional, mandatory precondition to filing an infringement suit that does not limit a federal court's subject-matter jurisdiction.
Facts:
- Numerous freelance authors wrote articles for various publishers.
- These publishers and owners of electronic databases subsequently reproduced the authors' works electronically without first obtaining their permission.
- Following the Supreme Court's decision in New York Times Co. v. Tasini, a large number of freelance authors filed copyright infringement lawsuits.
- These individual lawsuits were consolidated into a single class action lawsuit.
- The class of plaintiff authors included some who had registered their copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office and many who had not.
- After more than three years of mediation, the freelance authors, publishers, and electronic databases reached a global settlement agreement in March 2005.
- The settlement agreement was intended to resolve infringement claims for both registered and unregistered copyrights.
Procedural Posture:
- Numerous copyright infringement lawsuits by freelance authors were consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
- The parties reached a settlement agreement, which the District Court certified and approved over the objections of several authors, including Irvin Muehnick (Muehnick respondents).
- The Muehnick respondents, as appellants, appealed the settlement approval to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
- The Court of Appeals, on its own motion (sua sponte), questioned whether the District Court had subject-matter jurisdiction over claims for unregistered copyrights included in the settlement.
- The Second Circuit held that 17 U.S.C. § 411(a) is a jurisdictional requirement and, therefore, the District Court lacked jurisdiction to approve a settlement including unregistered works, vacating the lower court's judgment.
- The owners and publishers, as petitioners, sought and were granted a writ of certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Issue:
Does the requirement in 17 U.S.C. § 411(a) that a copyright be registered before an infringement suit is filed deprive a federal court of subject-matter jurisdiction over claims for unregistered works?
Opinions:
Majority - Justice Thomas
No. Section 411(a)'s registration requirement is a nonjurisdictional precondition to suit, not a restriction on a federal court's subject-matter jurisdiction. The Court, applying the framework from Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., determined that a statutory limitation is jurisdictional only if Congress clearly states that it is. The text of § 411(a) does not clearly label the registration requirement as jurisdictional; its single reference to 'jurisdiction' concerns a court's authority to decide the issue of registrability, not the underlying infringement claim. Furthermore, the requirement is located in a separate provision from the statutes that grant federal courts jurisdiction over copyright cases, such as 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1338. The existence of several statutory exceptions, which permit suits involving unregistered works, is inconsistent with the nature of a true jurisdictional bar, which cannot be waived or excused. Unlike the statutory appeal deadline in Bowles v. Russell, which was backed by a long history of this Court's own jurisdictional precedents, the history of treating § 411(a) as jurisdictional comes from 'drive-by' lower court rulings that are not dispositive.
Concurring - Justice Ginsburg
No. The majority correctly concludes that § 411(a) is nonjurisdictional based on the controlling precedent of Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp. This concurrence aims to reconcile the 'undeniable tension' between Arbaugh's 'bright-line' rule (a requirement is jurisdictional only if Congress explicitly says so) and the holding in Bowles v. Russell. The proper reconciliation is that Bowles represents a narrow exception based on stare decisis, applicable only where there is a long line of this Court's own decisions treating a specific type of requirement as jurisdictional. Because no Supreme Court precedent has ever held § 411(a) to be jurisdictional, Arbaugh's clear-statement rule controls, and the requirement must be treated as nonjurisdictional.
Analysis:
This decision significantly clarifies the distinction between jurisdictional requirements and nonjurisdictional claim-processing rules, continuing the Court's trend of narrowing what qualifies as jurisdictional. By overturning the widespread circuit court consensus that § 411(a) was jurisdictional, the ruling prevents defendants from using a plaintiff's failure to register as a non-waivable jurisdictional defect that can be raised at any time. This provides greater stability to judgments and facilitates the resolution of complex class action lawsuits, like the one at issue, which involve both registered and unregistered works.
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