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 The court on Monday agreed to hear a bid by a documentary
filmmaker to revive his lawsuit against state officials in North
Carolina who he accused of unlawfully pirating his footage of
the wrecked pirate ship named the Queen Anne's Revenge, which
went down in 1718.
The filmmaker, Frederick Allen, has appealed a lower court's
ruling that North Carolina could not be sued under federal law
for allegedly infringing his copyrights on five videos and a
photograph of salvage operation for the ship in the Atlantic
Ocean off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina.
Though states typically are shielded from lawsuits under the
U.S. Constitution through a form of protection known as
sovereign immunity, the case hinges on whether the shield
applies to copyright infringement. In 1990, the U.S. Congress
passed a law allowing states to be held liable for illegal
copying.
Blackbeard, whose name was Edward Teach, ran aground the Queen
Anne's Revenge, his flagship, on a sandbar 58 years before the
United States declared independence from Britain. By law, the
ship and its artifacts are owned by the state.
A private salvage company located the wreck in 1996. Allen and
his firm, Nautilus Productions, documented the efforts by divers
and archaeologists to recover artifacts. Allen obtained federal
copyright registrations on the videos and still images.
Allen and Nautilus sued North Carolina in federal court after
state officials used some of the documentary materials on
YouTube and a state agency website. The state also passed a law
converting the materials into public records.
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The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw
out the case last year, ruling that Congress exceeded its powers in
passing the 1990 Copyright Remedy Clarification Act as an attempt to
override state sovereign immunity in copyright disputes.
Appealing to the Supreme Court, Allen said states are flagrantly
infringing authors' copyrights and invoking sovereign immunity as a
way to avoid paying damages.
If the 4th Circuit's decision is not overturned, Allen said in a
legal filing, "creators of original expression will be left without
remedy when states trample their federal copyrights."
North Carolina Attorney General Joshua Stein emphasized the
shipwreck's historical and archaeological value and told the
justices that the 1990 law is unconstitutional.
Blackbeard prowled the shipping lanes off the Atlantic coast of
North America and throughout the Caribbean before being slain -
shot, stabbed and decapitated - in 1718 during an encounter with
British naval forces at North Carolina's Ocracoke Inlet.
The justices will hear the case in their next term, which begins in
October.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
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