Scotuscast

On January 8, 2019, the Supreme Court heard argument in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, a case considering whether a copyright owner may sue for infringement in federal court after merely applying for registration of the copyright, or whether the Registrar of Copyrights must first act on the application.Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. is an online news organization that licenses articles to different websites but retains the copyright to those articles. Wall-Street.com and Fourth Estate entered into a license agreement for a number of articles written by Fourth Estate. As part of the agreement, Wall-Street was required to remove all Fourth Estate content from its website before cancelling its account. When Wall-Street cancelled its account but continued to display Fourth Estate articles, Fourth Estate filed suit for copyright infringement against Wall-Street and its owner in federal district court. The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that the Copyright Act permits an infringemen