On March 2, the U.S. Supreme Court did something relatively rare: It decided a copyright case. Perhaps due to its focus on technical jurisdictional issues, the Supreme Court’s decision in Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick1 (Muchnick) has not been the subject of extensive commentary, but it has significant implications both for class actions involving a combination of registered and unregistered works and for cases in which a sole plaintiff sues on a registered work and obtains a consent judgment covering additional works that were not registered.
Muchnick effectively reinstates a class action settlement of claims by freelance journalists for the online use of their articles, and also may affect the final structuring of the Google Books class action settlement now sub judice before Southern District Judge Denny Chin. This column will discuss the Muchnick decision and its implications for the litigation and settlement of cases involving both registered and unregistered works.
‘Tasini’ and §201(c)
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