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 The justices unanimously upheld a lower court's 2018 ruling that
the state was protected by a legal doctrine called sovereign
immunity and could not be sued for copyright infringement for
using filmmaker Frederick Allen's images online.
Allen sued in 2015 in federal court, accusing the state of
infringing his copyrights on five videos and a photograph of
salvage operation for the historically significant ship, the
Queen Anne's Revenge, which went down in 1718 in the Atlantic
Ocean off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina.
The case tested the balance between the right of individuals to
protect their creations through copyrights and the fact that
states typically are shielded under the U.S. Constitution from
lawsuits seeking damages through sovereign immunity.
Allen said he was saddened by the court's decision and that his
company, Nautilus Productions, would evaluate its options.
"The state of North Carolina routinely and vigorously enforces
its own copyrights, yet simultaneously hides behind sovereign
immunity when it violates the intellectual property rights of
its own citizens," Allen said.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said he was pleased
with the ruling. "The court unanimously upheld longstanding
precedents recognizing that all states retain certain core
aspects of sovereignty, including sovereign immunity from
copyright lawsuits," Stein said.
The case hinged on whether the Copyright Remedy Clarification
Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990 to allow states to be
held liable for illegal copying, was valid.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
threw out the lawsuit in 2018, ruling that Congress overstepped
its authority when it passed that law.
'DIGITAL BLACKBEARDS'
Writing for the court, liberal Justice Elena Kagan on Monday
agreed, noting that there was no evidence of widespread
copyright violations by states. However, Kagan said Congress
could try to enact a better-tailored law to would stop states
from illegally copying.
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"Even while respecting constitutional limits, it can bring digital
Blackbeards to justice," Kagan wrote.
Blackbeard, whose name was Edward Teach, prowled the shipping lanes
off the Atlantic coast of North America and throughout the Caribbean
before being slain - shot, stabbed and decapitated - during an
encounter with British naval forces at North Carolina's Ocracoke
Inlet.
Blackbeard ran the Queen Anne's Revenge, his flagship, aground 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
of North Carolina. The three-masted vessel, roughly 100 feet (30
meters) long, was a French slave ship before being captured and
renamed by pirates in 1717.
After the wreck was discovered in 1996, the state employed divers
and scientists to excavate, preserve and study its artifacts while
Allen spent years filming and photographing the recovery. Allen
obtained federal copyright registrations on the videos and still
images.
Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by fellow liberal Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, agreed with the ruling but only because he said the
court's precedents dictated it. Breyer faulted those prior rulings
for limiting congressional power to create laws that require states
that pirate intellectual property to "pay for what they plundered."
Allen and Nautilus sued North Carolina in 2015 after state officials
used some of the videos on YouTube and a photo in a newsletter. The
state also passed a law converting the materials into public
records.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ruling was issued online
only rather than the normal practice of the justices announcing
opinions from the bench.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
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