In what is perhaps William Shakespeare’s most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, Juliet asks herself: “What is in a name?” She concludes that a name is of no consequence, noting that a rose would smell the same regardless of its name and extrapolating that the family name of her love interest, Romeo, should not matter. However, due to a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for Fifth Circuit, we are not in Verona anymore. In Energy Intelligence Group v. Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, 2020 WL 219008 (5th Cir. 2020), the court held that the filename of a document could constitute copyright management information (CMI) within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and unauthorized altering or removal of it could be the basis of liability under the copyright law. This decision has significant ramifications for both copyright litigation strategies and how authors and copyright owners should name their digital files.
Copyright Management Information and the DMCA
More than two decades ago, Congress passed the DMCA in order to provide protection to copyright owners in the digital age. Microsoft v. AT&T, 550 U.S. 437, 458 (2007). Among the two most well-known provisions are: (1) the anti-circumvention provision, which provides a cause of action to copyright holders when unauthorized persons go around technological measures in order to access copyrighted works, 17 U.S.C. §1201; and (2) the CMI provision, which provides a cause of action to copyright holders when unauthorized persons attribute certain types of false information about or remove certain types of information associated with a copyrighted work. 17 U.S.C. §1202.
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