In a recent ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the well-known doctrine, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse," does not apply to copyright registration applications. The Court's decision could help small businesses and creative professionals protect their works even if they make legal mistakes when applying for copyright registration.
In Unicolors v. H&M, the high court held that a copyright registration for fabric designs was valid even though the copyright applicant violated legal regulations by including multiple designs in a single application instead of filing separate applications.
The rules that govern when a copyright holder must file multiple applications for multiple creative works can be complicated. It can often trip up applicants who are trying to save time and money by filing only one application that includes multiple works. The Court's recent decision interpreting the Copyright Act's "safe harbor" provision makes it easier for copyright registrants to protect their creations even though they may run afoul of technical copyright rules.
The Court's opinion is a victory for ordinary people and small businesses who may not be able to afford to hire attorneys to file copyright registrations, especially when the artist may have large portfolios of copyrighted works. Now, artists, photographers, musicians, poets and essayists may find it easier to obtain the benefits of copyright law, including obtaining statutory damages and attorneys' fees, if they win a copyright case.
The Court's ruling also makes it harder for alleged copyright infringers to avoid legal liability by using loopholes to exploit innocent mistakes made by copyright owners during the registration process.
The Court recognized, however, that claimed legal mistakes must be in good faith for a copyright applicant to take advantage of the law's safe harbor. A copyright holder cannot show willful blindness to the law to maintain a valid copyright registration. And a judge or jury does not have to automatically take the copyright registrant's alleged misunderstanding of the law at face value. Circumstantial evidence could prove that the allegedly innocent copyright owner did actually understand the copyright law and chose to ignore it.
In Unicolors, the Supreme Court reversed a California Court of Appeal decision, which held that the safe harbor provision of copyright law only applied to mistakes of fact, not to legal mistakes. Retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the opinion in what may be one of his last decisions for the Court. He indicated in his 6-3 majority opinion that the safe harbor principle likely would apply to other thorny legal issues involved in copyright registrations, such as whether a work was made for hire, when the work was published, and whether the work is a compilation or a derivative work under the law.
