Supreme Court Takes Jurisdiction Over “Jurisdiction”

copyrightA bit overshadowed by all the hubbub over the oral argument in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court yesterday handed down an important copyright opinion in Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick. (But see Howard Wasserman, Marcia Coyle.) The court held that Section 411(a) of the Copyright Act, which requires registration of a copyright as a prerequisite to an infringement suit, is not “jurisdictional”—that is, failure to file a registration does not deprive a court of all power to hear a claim.

This might not initially sound significant; after all, a plaintiff who files an infringement claim on an unregistered copyright is still going to have the case dismissed, whether Section 411(a) is deemed a mere prerequisite to filing or jurisdictional. But the distinction matters in three types of cases: class actions where unnamed members of the class would include owners of unregistered works (the Muchnick situation); plaintiffs who seek an injunction against further infringement encompassing all of their works, registered and unregistered; and would-be defendants who file for a declaratory judgement against a copyright owner who hasn’t registered yet. All three of those seem like worthy candidates for a court’s consideration as a policy matter, but all three were impeded by a slew of lower court opinions holding that a failure to register deprived the court of all power to even hear such disputes. (Congratulations for the win are due to lawyers from my old firm: Chuck Sims, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, and Jon Baumgarten.)

A bit of background before I continue:

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A Broadening of Diversity Jurisdiction

Students of civil procedure—which should mean just about everybody interested in using the formal processes of the law to vindicate rights—will be interested in a decision today by the United States Supreme Court. The opinion concerned the provision in the statutory grant of diversity jurisdiction that deems a corporation “to be a citizen of any State by which it has been incorporated and of the State where it has its principal place of business.” 28 U. S. C. §1332(c)(1) (emphasis added). There has been a longstanding imprecision—a lack of unanimity—within the lower federal courts as to whether a corporation’s “principal place of business” is its “nerve center,” “locus of operations,” “center of corporate activities,” “muscle center” (none of these latter four terms being statutory), or some otherwise determined place. In Hertz Corp. v. Friend, the Court resolved the matter.

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Civil Procedure Fun for the Weekend

I like to begin the first day of Civil Procedure with a review of a civil action and I like to start each class with a brief recap of the last one. This year – for my review of my review – I found a musical recap – apparently made by students at that law school just to the west of us. There are some substantive problems. For example, there is no consideration of subject matter jurisdiction (“he’s from Chicago/we have diversity”) and a direct or third party claim against the law school would not be an “interpleader” – but, hey, its Madison. What can we expect when the issue isn’t Foucaultian perspectives on the gender violence implicit in the Rule Against Perpetuities? (Just kidding!) The group also apparently did not regard the ability to carry a tune to be necessary to star in a music video, but that’s kind of charming. In any event, I thought it was cute. My students seem to enjoy it – at least a little. The question for all you: Can our Dean sing better than their Dean?

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