Patent and trademark applicants need to be pretty careful in
their registration applications, but the Supreme Court has made
things a bit easier for copyright applicants. The Court ruled in
Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes &
Mauritz, L.P. that
legal inaccuracies in a copyright application do not invalidate the
copyright if the applicant didn't recognize them at the
time of filing.
Unicolors, a fabric designer, sued H&M for copyright
infringement. H&M lost, but claimed on appeal that
Unicolors' underlying copyright application was invalid.
Unicolors had registered 31 separate fabric works, and the
registration rules required all those works to have been published
at the same time in a "single unit of publication"—
which they hadn't been.
