On March 2, the U.S. Supreme Court held that registration according to 17 U.S.C. 411(a) is “a precondition to filing a copyright infringement claim that does not restrict a federal court’s subject matter jurisdiction.” Reed Elsevier Inc. v Muchnick, 130 S. Ct. 1237, 1241 (2010). Although not apparent in the Court’s opinion, international treaty obligations may have played a role in the Supreme Court granting certiorari and in the final holding. Because of existing international treaty obligations in the area of intellectual property, this holding is not only beneficial to the parties below but also to the United States by avoiding a potential action before the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In a copyright class action brought on behalf of freelance authors with registered copyrights and freelance authors without registered copyrights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit held that, because some of the copyright holders had failed to register their copyrighted works with the U.S. Copyright Office, the district court lacked jurisdiction to certify the class. Such a holding, if upheld, would have required a copyright holder to register with the Copyright Office prior to bringing suit in a federal court for two reasons: to meet the registration requirement of § 411 and to meet the federal subject-matter jurisdiction requirement. (Although the Supreme Court reversed on the jurisdictional issue, it declined “to address whether § 411(a)’s registration requirement is a mandatory precondition to suit that…district courts may or should enforce sua sponte by dismissing copyright infringement claims involving unregistered works.” So although the Supreme Court ruled that a district court has jurisdiction over cases involving unregistered copyrights, a court might nonetheless rule that failure to register a U.S. work is a bar to suit.)

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