Cannons from the wreck believed to be Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge on Nov. 21, 1996.

North Carolina can keep on infringing Frederick Allen's copyrighted undersea videos of the Queen Anne's Revenge shipwreck, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The high court ruled unanimously that, just as it decided with patent cases 21 years ago, states are immune from copyright suits under the Eleventh Amendment. The ruling struck down the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990, which purported to strip states of immunity from copyright suits. It leaves standing "Blackbeard's Law," a 2015 North Carolina measure that explicitly permits the state to display photos and video from the salvage of the Queen Anne's Revenge, a pirate ship operated in the 18th century by Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard.

"The problem for Allen is that this Court has already rejected his theory," Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court in Allen v. Cooper. "Here too, the power to 'secur[e]' an intellectual property owner's 'exclusive Right' under Article I stops when it runs into sovereign immunity."

The dispute stems from the 1998 discovery of the shipwreck by Intersal Inc. Because the wreck was technically property of North Carolina, Intersal formed a contract with the state to share the salvage rights. It provided Intersal the exclusive right to market most of the video accounts of the salvage.

Intersal in turn brought aboard videographer Frederick Allen, who spent more than a decade shooting video and still images documenting the underwater shipwreck and the efforts of divers and archaeologists to recover various artifacts from it. Allen registered 13 works with the U.S. Copyright Office, each covering a year's worth of footage.

Allen became concerned in 2013 that the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources was displaying his works on its website. A settlement agreement provided that the department would display only non-commercial digital media bearing a watermark and a link to the department's, Intersal's and Allen's websites.

But in 2015 the North Carolina legislature enacted "Blackbeard's Law," a statute that makes public "all photographs, video records, or other documentary materials of a derelict vessel or shipwreck," among other things.

In ruling for the state, Kagan extended an olive branch to Allen and copyright holders in general. When Congress passed the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, the Register of Copyrights was able to document only about a dozen instances of state infringement, including just two that were intentional. Lawyers and amici curiae for Allen had argued to the high court that the problem of state copyright infringement has increased dramatically since then.

Kagan said that if Congress were to revisit the issue and document substantial instances of due process violations, it might be able to enact "a tailored statute" that "can effectively stop States from behaving as copyright pirates.

"Even while respecting constitutional limits, it can bring digital Blackbeards to justice," Kagan wrote.

Justice Stephen Breyer concurred separately, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He noted that they had dissented from Florida Prepaid in 1999 and continue to believe it was wrongly decided. But they joined Monday's opinion out of respect for stare decisis.

"One might think that Walt Disney Pictures could sue a State (or anyone else) for hosting an unlicensed screening of the studio's 2003 blockbuster film, Pirates of the Caribbean (or any one of its many sequels)," Breyer wrote, but not so under the court's jurisprudence. "Faced with the risk of unfairness to authors and inventors alike, perhaps Congress will venture into this great constitutional unknown," Breyer wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas also concurred separately, saying that Kagan was putting too much emphasis on stare decisis. "If our decision in Florida Prepaid were demonstrably erroneous, the Court would be obligated to 'correct the error, regardless of whether other factors support overruling the precedent,'" he wrote.

He also wrote that Kagan went too far by outlining how Congress might create a work-around. "We should not purport to advise Congress on how it might exercise its legislative authority," he wrote, "nor give our blessing to hypothetical statutes or legislative records not at issue here."

North Carolina Deputy Solicitor General Ryan Park had the winning argument for the state. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner Derek Shaffer represented Cooper.