On March 4, 2019, the United States Supreme Court held that,
with certain exceptions, a copyright owner must obtain a copyright
registration certificate from the Copyright Office before filing a
copyright infringement suit. The unanimous opinion in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v.
Wall-Street.Com, LLC, authored by Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, affirmed the Eleventh Circuit and resolved a split among
the circuit courts of appeal. It also has big implications for
copyright owners.
The facts of the case are simple. The plaintiff Fourth Estate
had licensed some content to the defendant Wall-Street.com to
upload to a website for certain period. When the period ran out,
the defendant failed to take the content down from the
website, thus allegedly breaching the license. The copyright to the
content had not yet been registered, so Fourth Estate filed
applications to register it with the Copyright Office and
simultaneously filed a copyright infringement suit against
