How Will The Supreme Court Function With The Varsity Brands Test?

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced it had agreed to review the Sixth Circuit's copyright decision in Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands, which involves the issue of whether certain designs appearing on cheerleading uniforms are copyrightable or are instead non-copyrightable functional elements that are an inherent part of cheerleading uniform designs. In a split decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court and ruled that the use of "stripes, chevrons and color blocks" were copyrightable despite the Copyright Act's prohibition against extending copyright protection to "useful articles." Though the majority and dissent disagreed on whether these design elements were copyrightable, both seemed to agree that in light of the different and sometimes conflicting approaches adopted by various courts of appeal for distinguishing between an object's utilitarian and copyrightable elements, "the law in this area is a mess" and intervention by