Federal law governing copyright does not have a time limit on damages, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on May 9.
Justices let a case brought by a music producer against Warner Chappell Music proceed.
Sherman Nealy, the producer, sued Warner Chappell in 2018, after he said he discovered music he produced was being used by the company without his permission.
The Copyright Act requires copyright infringement claims to be commenced within three years of accrual.
While the infringement started in 2008, Mr. Nealy said he did not learn of the infringement until 2016 because he was in prison while his former business partner sold music he produced to Warner Chappell.
The three-year time limit has been interpreted by some courts as starting when a person learns of an infringement.
Warner Chappell did not challenge the timeliness of Mr. Nealy’s suit but did challenge his request for damages dating back 10 years, arguing he could only recover damages for profits from the previous three years.
U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, agreed, citing an earlier Supreme Court decision that he said “explicitly delimited damages to the three years prior to the filing of a copyright infringement action.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, though, reverse Judge Ruiz’s order, finding that Mr. Nealy could seek damages for 10 years because his claims were “timely under the discovery rule” and because the act “does not support the existence of a separate damages bar for an otherwise timely copyright claim.”
Warner Chappell asked the high court to weigh in, noting that two appeals courts had found no time limits exist for how far back damages can go, while another appeals court has limited damages to the three years before a suit is filed.
The case “is a pristine vehicle for the Court to decide the meaning of the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations,” the company said in a filing.
While the act outlines a three-year limit for bringing a claim, it does not cover damages, the majority concluded.
“The ’time-to-sue prescription,' as we have called it, establishes no separate three-year period for recovering damages, this one running from the date of infringement,” Justice Kagan, appointed by former President Barack Obama, said. “If any time limit on damages exists, it must come from the Act’s remedial sections. But those provisions likewise do not aid a long-ago infringer. They state without qualification that an infringer is liable either for statutory damages or for the owner’s actual damages and the infringer’s profits. There is no time limit on monetary recovery. So a copyright owner possessing a timely claim for infringement is entitled to damages, no matter when the infringement occurred.”
The parties in the case did not respond to requests for comment.
Justice Kagan was joined by Justice John Roberts, an appointee of former President George W. Bush; Sonia Sotomayor, another appointee of President Obama; and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, appointees of President Trump.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, appointed by President Trump, said in a dissent that the majority, in addressing what’s known as the discovery rule, should have addressed whether the act “has room for such a rule.”
He said he would have rejected the case and waited until another that cleanly presented whether the act authorizes the discovery rule.
“The act almost certainly does not tolerate a discovery rule. And that fact promises soon enough to make anything we might say today about the rule’s operational details a dead letter,” he wrote.
Justice Clarence Thomas, an appointee of former President George H. W. Bush, and Justice Samuel Alito, an appointee of President George W. Bush, joined Justice Gorsuch.
