Subreddit covering the Supreme Court of the United States, its past, present and future cases, its members, and its impact on the nation.
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Kagan wrote. Her writing is so clear and readable; it makes for excellent opinions.
She's definitely my favorite writer of the group now, used to love Breyer too
Didn't she clerk for Bryer
My bad I looked it up and she clerked for Thurgood Marshall
I don’t know why in my mind she’s too young for that to be true… sigh, I guess she’s not
Jesus, was she six years old when she was clerking?
Is it true that Marshall wasn’t doing his own work and relied on his clerks.
Yeah, shes one of them that actually belongs there, not some hacktivist authoritarian.
I'd submit that she didn't belong there (at the time she was nominated at least).
I’d love to hear the reasoning for this.
She had never been a judge before she was appointed. She was never a trial lawyer. Her only somewhat related experience was 1 year as solicitor general where she argued 6 cases before the court.
People who’s only critique of ACB is that she had very little judicial experience should keep the same energy for Justice Kagan.
Scalia really influenced her in a great way.
Huge decision for my practice, which is based in NY and has been subject to Sohm, which is now abrogated.
Can you ELI5 what this case means?
And do you think it was rightly or wrongly decided (or a mix?)
Already did in another comment
Edit explanation
Thanks!!
So the dissenters are essentially saying "we can and should make broad precedent even though that specific issue is not being brought up on appeal." Scary line of thinking by Thomas et al.
"Rather than address that question, the Court takes care to emphasize that its resolution must await a future case. The trouble is, 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."
I'm not a lawyer but isn't he also saying 'We should make broad precedent and i've already decided my position even though we haven't formally heard arguments?"
Edited: Added "formally" and removed "any"... u/NYCIndieConcerts is right.
Well, that's overstating it a bit. The question presented assumed the discovery rule is applicable, but the Respondent did raise that question in its Brief and the Justices did ask A LOT of questions about it at oral argument (the phrase "discovery rule" was mentioned 117 times) (transcript)
What's more interesting is that the Dissent does not mention the pending petition for certiorari in Hearst Newspapers v. Martinelli, which specifically presents the question of "Whether the “discovery rule” applies to the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations for civil claims."
The fact that it takes 4 judges to grant cert and that only 3 judges signed on to the dissent tells me that they are the only 3 willing to do away with the discovery rule outright, but the fact that this decision punts the issue tells me that they don't have more than 4 who would allow it to continue as is.
My gut is that Roberts and Kavanaugh agree with the textualist approach but they don't want to rock the boat too much considering there are no disputes among the Courts of Appeals and lower courts.
Yup
Yes and that's how the conservative wing of the court is operating at this point.
They decided their position and will break precedent and ignore facts to make it happen
I don't think that's what they're saying. I think they're saying they should make no precedent, hence why they advocate for a DIG, which has no precedential value. They wanted to DIG the case because it's possible that this decision will be of no value if they find there to be no discovery rule in the copyright act in a future case
I think itd be more surprising if Thomas didn't say something scary and alarming at this point.
He is paid for and will respond as his handlers require.
This is what they've been doing the past few years. Making hypothetical scenarios and basing judgment on that rather than the facts of the case. You judge the case and its details. If there's an issue or a separate issue that deals with another aspect of the same law, you need to take it as it comes. There doesn't have to be only one ruling on a thing. Multiple rulings help to form precedent and standards. Sorry for the rant, just so tired of it.
Yes, the dear Uncle Thomas
Anything Thomas and Alito don't like is good for Americans. I don't care what the issue is.
It would also be great if we had a scotus that Americans believed in and not stolen seats.
Yeah, you can pretty much look at any of the far right folks in the US, figure out what they hate, and then assume that’s good for most people. It’s not 100% but it’s almost always correct.
Setting your moral system to “exactly opposite of the GOP” would steer you correctly on almost any topic.
their only positive, being pro 2nd amendment, is a giant fucking lie. They only want straight white christians to own guns, and they ignore the "well regulated" part.
YEP. Not to mention that their insane refusal to cooperate with some low hanging fruit gun safety laws is likely going to result in more regulation written by people who don’t know anything about guns.
If we had absolutely no exception background checks for all sales and red flag laws to take guns from wife beaters and people who torture dogs it would have stopped like 60% of the mass shootings in America. But nope. We can’t do basic shit because it’s a “slippery slope.” Unless black people get guns. Then it’s time for confiscation without due process lmao.
These 2 need to get off the bench and the next two should follow. Thomas and Alito are worse of the worst as human beings.
I have to disagree. (slightly) but since Thomas has had his stopped clock moment and wrote a useful ruling, I'd be happy to see him in jail for corruption.
Some decisions are 9-0. There are some seriously b0rken appellate circuits out there.
Except for Kelo and some, albeit very small, 4A cases where Thomas actually got it right
They're right on this one. The discovery rule should go. That said, their dissent isn't really a dissent. They don't disagree with any of Kagan's legal analysis, what little there is (that's not a dig - the legal analysis here is real simple, there's not much for her to say). Say what you will about Thomas politically, but his views on intellectual property cases are weirdly good. I don't know if he's got a clerk who understands IP or what, but he gets the issues better than the rest of them. Scalia and Ginsberg were also good on IP and administrative law. Sure do miss their expertise on those issues.
For us lay folk, is this a win for the general population or a win for big corporations?
Neither really because copyright owners can be both. But this will help ensure that lawsuits by independent artists against major corporations are worth the pricetag.
For example, let's say someone began using your works 10 years ago and made millions of dollars off the infringement, but then they stopped using your work 5 years ago. You just discovered the infringement last year and file lawsuit. The Supreme Court is saying that you can still get those millions of dollars from 10 years ago. Under the alternative, you would not be entitled to recover any damages.
Thank you for breaking this down!
I'd argue this is favourable to the general population because the alternative is Biggest Bully Wins law, which is big corp. Typically anything to the effect of "you can get away with something where the law doesn't clearly say you can't" or "you can get away with something by stalling for time" is a big corp advantage.
Isn't there someone who's job it is to explain legal cases to lay folk? If so, you'd be excellent. Tho I am sure the pay would be low...
Yeah they call us lawyers. Pay is pretty all right.
Remembering also that here a largish fraction of the works that may be infringed are in fact not held by artists, but by IP holding companies after the artists death.
Not necessarily. It depends on how the district courts apply the rule. If you, with due diligence, should have discovered those infringements, your claims are still stale. And since copyright infringement, by nature, generally occurs in public, it may prove difficult to establish that you had no way of knowing, absent fraud and concealment.
The Supreme Court here is saying the statute of limitations is a claim accrual rule and not a damages limitation rule. If you should have, with due diligence, discovered an infringement, then the SOL will not allow you to maintain an action, which means you'll get no damages. Basically, it's all or nothing, not a 3-year rule lookback as the Second Circuit adopted in Sohm.
Edit - a word
Yes, well put. As opposed to, say, the Patent Act, which is expressly written as a limitation on collecting monetary relief.
And that seems reasonable. You should be able to collect on any profits someone made off of you, regardless of when… and if it has to do with copyright, make it as long as copyright is active.
I think it's the right ruling to not close the doors on a claim but any real judgement should weigh heavily on how much the owner is responsible for monitoring for infringement and proving that the copier knowingly infringed the whole time. Sounds less a mess in the lower courts
Two points:
A copyright owner has no duty to search for infringements or to police its own rights. No property owner has an obligation to do that. You don't get to trespass onto someone else's property and steal their car, and then say "well, you didn't have security cameras."
As recently stated by the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals: "the alleged infringer knows of and controls the infringing acts and the copyright holder has little means of discovering those acts," and “with the constant evolution of technology, copyright infringement is now easier to commit, harder to detect, and tougher to litigate.” Starz Entm't, LLC v. MGM Domestic Television Distribution, LLC, 39 F.4th 1236, 1246 (9th Cir. 2022); see also William A. Graham Co. v. Haughey, 568 F.3d 425, 437 (3d Cir. 2009)
2) Copyright infringement is and always has been a strict liability offense, and the infringer's state of mind is only relevant where the copyright owner is seeking a willfulness enhancement of statutory damages. Where actual damages are sought, knowledge is entirely irrelevant.
One good explanation from 60 years ago:
Shapiro, Bernstein Co. v. H.L. Green Co., 316 F.2d 304, 308 (2d Cir. 1963)
Except it doesn't. Just because you recover damages does not meant it was worth it to prosecute. It's close to being worth it perhaps but in many cases it becomes a question of was this time well spent or should we have focused on something else rather than prosecution potentially generating bad press as well.
So, anti-comsumer, then... Because this will only really help big Hollywood.
Not really? If you’re a small musician or an indie producer and an artist at a big record label samples your music without a valid license, this can benefit you. That’s the alleged fact pattern in the underlying case today. Not all copyright owners are big industry.
For every case like your example, there are are at least a dozen more of big business using archaic copyright law to crush innovation and freedom.
Consumers rarely benefit with strong intellectual property laws. They are almost always hurt.
Not so. You have no idea how much artists are exploited with people copying their work from online postings; quite a few are leaving social media because of the theft.
Most the AI images you see are derived from artists' work. No, not Rembrandt but working artists. Yes, somewhat different but if you run a class using "this" as your model to train from it has value. Some artists who created work years ago cry foul and the people who did the AI image accuse them. Big controversy.
It's like you writing a computer program at home to make work easier, then you're fired ... but the company keeps the code for it. Some argue yeah, but he put the program on a company computer.
Your company may have a valid argument that it's work product, depending on your duties, work schedule, and work arrangements however.
Thomas dissented, so that should answer your question.
It doesn't in this case
Not a big win for anybody. There was only one circuit that didn't already do what this ruling says the law is, and that's the Second Circuit (New York). For the rest of the country, this doesn't change anything. Moreover, If the due diligence aspect of the discovery rule is properly applied, this ruling will rarely matter. In any event, I'd bet a beer that the discovery rule itself is abolished within five years. What is going to happen is a bunch of music trolls - mostly kids of famous artists who are now dead - are going to file lawsuits claiming damages for long-ago infringements. Hopefully the district courts shut them down.
I'm not a fan of the court, but I wish this sub went back to discussing the merits rather than making assumptions based on the votes...
Anyways, am I correct in understanding this was pretty one sided in effect? The majority is saying the 3-year rule doesn't apply to damages, while the dissent is saying there's shouldn't be a 3-year at all, so the whole question is stupid.
The court no longer cares about the merits of cases. It makes sense that the folks discussing cases would go about it the way the court is
Agreed. For a subreddit that claims to be full of people interested in SCOTUS and what the law it seems to be full of people who want to ponder on claims of bias and meanie face judges vs merits and procedure. Don’t like a decision? Make a freaking legal argument like the Justices do don’t assassinate the character of the author. Just pretend an opinion is Per Curiam if you hate the author idk
The majority is saying that if you can timely file claims for infringements that occurred more than three years ago, you can collect damages.
The dissent doesn't really disagree, they're just saying it should be almost impossible to do that and we should get rid of the rule saying you can, which appears nowhere in the Copyright Act.
Downvote away, but again it's interesting the Trump case was urgent and historic and a decision for the ages? And they were all so worried about impacting the political process at all?
Seems like one option might be to expedite that decision given their own words and the supposed import of it
Interesting how the actual impact of their actions continues to be to grant delay to a certain former President who wants delay.
Nothing to down vote. This is a solid analysis. Because the decision was made at the lower court and they were very clear about the reasoning for their decision. The SCOTUS should have never took that case, they only took it to delay the decision or overturn it or rewrite the decision for his specific benefit.
Yup they should have kicked that can down the road
Layperson here. If I understand correctly... Some circuits interpret the Copyright Act's 3-years-to-sue clause as meaning the plaintiff must sue within 3 years of learning of the infringement, rather than within 3 years of the infringement itself.
The majority in SCOTUS is punting on whether this "discovery rule" is hogwash, saying it was not in dispute in this case, and thus was not presented properly for them to decide upon.
So instead, they are only resolving the issue which was presented: a disagreement over whether, in cases brought under this possibly bogus rule, damages should be limited to the last 3 years before the lawsuit, or if damages should accrue all the way back to the time of the infringement. They decided in favor of going all the way back to the time of the infringement, since there's nothing in the statutes to suggest the 3-year limit on suing should be interpreted differently for the purpose of damages.
The dissent says the discovery rule is garbage, so a case in which the parties sidestep that issue should not have been indulged at all.
99% correct but I'm pretty sure that all 11 Courts of Appeals are in unanimous agreement that the discovery rule does apply and that there is no split between lower courts.
How did that happen?
How did what happen?
If you're asking for a history lesson, I think it began with a 1983 decision by Richard Posner, then Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit
I wonder if anyone knows if Thomas dissents have the all time record.
Even in relatively mundane cases and moments like this, it's hard not to be deeply cynical of our system. The Court's determination to wrap itself in convoluted layers of tradition and too-clever-by-half reasoning has the exact opposite effect of the seemingly intended one: it creates a greater perception to the public of capriciousness and reduces confidence in the Law.
Like, I get what the court is saying here. But I would suggest that it only seems sane or normal because we're all so used it. "In the case of whether or not plums are fruits, we decline to grant cert because the case was filed outside of plum season, but we will hear the case of whether avocados are fruits, but we'll only consider the issue of Hass avocados, but this ruling should be construed to apply to all tomatoes except Roma (but not avocados other than Hass). It COULD apply to other avocados, but we'd need a separate case for that (except we won't grant cert to that case when it does come up because it was filed by a producer whose avocado crop accounts for less than 12% of their overall crop). Anyway, in the case of whether avocados are fruits we find that the fruit status is irrelevant, that Hass avocados may be priced by weight or count in the produce aisle of grocery stores (which we also decline to define) and that workplace discrimination is legal. We now adjourn for a 3 month vacation."
What was the old rule ?
It was unclear. Lower courts were split on whether all damages were available or only damages that accrued during the 3 years prior to filing the lawsuit. That's why the Supreme Court stepped in.
So now a company can sue someone going back a lifetime ?
No, any copyright owner - whether a company or individual person - has to file a lawsuit within 3 years of the claim accruing. If you wait too long, you cannot file or maintain a suit, and cannot get anything. But as long as you file promptly, all past damages are on the table.
Right but they can now?
I’ve never been a fan of copyright law.
This is a giveaway to big business and lawyers
I don’t need to know any more. If Thomas and Alito are for it, I’m against it.
at least we still have fair use.
Thomas and Alito are working very hard to destory the reputation of SCOUS. And they have lifetime to do it. It is time to change.
Gorsuch’s last sentence in his dissent: “Better, in my view, to answer a question that does matter than one that almost certainly does not.”
Also Gorsuch, in Trump v. United States: “I’m not concerned about this case, but I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives.”
EDIT: Why the downvote LOL? Gorsuch and the conservatives are ignoring the insurrectionist before them!
I like apples but am not partial to oranges
And I like sense while not being partial to nonsense.
You pretty much know how these 3 stooges are gonna rule on any given case brought before them, especially Thomas.
The fool is so transparent and only rules as he’s told.
traitor scumbag bought-and-paid-for POS Thomas: “It’s what I do!”
6-3.
Just like everyone always complains about…
Compared to taking away a women’s bodily autonomy and effectively making trump a king this is not consequential in comparison
Dobbs was 5-4 to overturn Roe and the Trump ruling was 9-0.
Doesn’t change the fact this court took away bodily autonomy and made it extremely difficult for doctors to keep their patients healthy. The 9-0 had to do if the state of Colorado could keep him off the ballot. What I’m talking about is the conscious choice of this extreme court to delay whether Trump is immune from all crimes.
Why don’t you wait to see how they rule on immunity before getting pre-upset about it. Also the QP is an important one to sort out because if the district ruling stood as is it opens up a world of bad court cases in the future.
The real problem on the case is how long it took to bring the charges. This case was an always going to take a while to prosecute. Jack Smith should have brought it much sooner so this wasn’t all running up against the election.
Except this ruling was bipartisan.... The Dobbs ruling? Not so much.
Dobbs was 5-4 to overturn Roe.
How does your statement contradict mine? Was Dobbs bipartisan? Did I say it was a 6-3 ruling?
Thomas and Alito are in dissent more often than anyone else on the court. The court is usually bipartisan.