US Supreme Court holds that copyright law’s discovery rule does not impose a 3-year limit on infringement damages.

Journal Article

1 electronic resource (pages 802-804)

Legal context Prior to 1957, the US Copyright Act did not contain a statute of limitations for civil infringement suits. As a result, federal courts applied US states’ statutes of limitations and the equitable doctrine of laches to protect defendants against any unreasonable delays in filing a copyright infringement suit. Subsequently, in 1957, Congress amended the Copyright Act to require copyright owners to bring infringement claims within 3 years of accrual, and in 2014, the Supreme Court1 clarified that laches does not apply in copyright cases because this statute of limitations already forecloses any unreasonable delays. However, the US Courts of Appeal are split as to when a copyright claim ‘accrues’ and the 3-year timeframe begins. One view is that a copyright claim begins to ‘“accrue[]” when an infringing act occurs’ as was the case in Petrella. In Petrella, the US District Court for the Central District of California, which falls in the Ninth Circuit, held that ‘when a defendant commits successive violations, the statute of limitations runs separately from each violation’.2 Thus, although the plaintiff knew about the defendant’s infringement and waited roughly 9 years to file suit, her claim was not barred but instead limited to seeking damages for violations that had occurred within the 3-year period prior to the lawsuit.

Intellectual Property Law & Practice ; 19, 11, 2024, 1747-1540.

Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press, 2024.

English

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