The US Supreme Court rules mistakes of law justify copyright registration errors

The US Supreme Court rules mistakes of law justify copyright registration errors

Justice Stephen Breyer said that the statute referred to knowledge and did not apply to a lack of legal knowledge

The US Supreme Court has ruled in a 6-3 opinion that mistakes of the law, and not only the faults of the facts, could protect the parties from losing their copyrights on the grounds of inaccurate registration.

Unicolors, a fabric design company, had sued the fashion giant Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) for copyright infringement in 2020. While the jury ruled in favor of Unicolors, H&M had argued at the trial that Unicolors' copyright registration was inaccurate and hence invalid.

H&M asserted that, while a single registration could cover multiple works only if they were "included in the same unit of publication," Unicolors' registration covered 31 designs not published as a single unit. In fact, some were sold exclusively to certain customers while others were sold to the public.

The district court rejected H&M's argument under the Copyrights Act, which states: "A certificate of registration satisfies the requirements of this Section and Section 412, regardless of whether the certificate contains any inaccurate information unless the inaccurate information was included on the application for copyright registration with the knowledge that it was inaccurate."

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, however, held that the safeguard was only available against inaccuracies stemming from mistakes of the fact and not of the law.

Granting certiorari, the Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Stephen Breyer, found that the distinction did not change the applicability of §411's "safe harbor" provision. The court found that the statute simply referred to "knowledge" and there was no reason to suppose it did not apply to a lack of legal knowledge.

Other provisions of the Copyright Act showed "knowledge" encompassed legal knowledge since the provisions required registrants to know legal concepts. Since Unicolors was under a "good-faith misunderstanding" of the legal requirement, it did not submit its application with the "knowledge that it was inaccurate."

The court also found that the cases decided before §411(b) was enacted "overwhelmingly" found that inadvertent mistakes in the registration did not invalidate copyrights. It referred to reports of the legislature to find that the Section was intended to "eliminate loopholes" that could be "exploited" to block the otherwise valid copyrights.

The court rejected H&M's attempt to apply the maxim "ignorance of the law is no excuse," stating that it "normally applied" to crucial elements of the law in criminal cases and not in civil cases concerning the supplementary legal requirements.

Three judges dissented, saying Unicolors had brought the case on the question of whether the "knowledge" required intent to defraud. But they had now changed their arguments to deal with a "novel question no court addressed before today."

These judges did not agree with their counterparts that Unicolors' new arguments were "fairly included" in the original question and thus found the ruling to transgress the appellate review process.