By Jeremy T. Walker

In its March 4, 2019, opinion in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corporation v. Wall-Street.com, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that copyright owners must wait for copyright registration before pursuing lawsuits against accused infringers.  Under the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright protection attaches to “original works of authorship,” such as literary, musical or dramatic works as soon as they are fixed in any tangible medium of expression.  Thus, for example, once a novelist prepares a handwritten draft of her work, she immediately gains exclusive copyrights to that work.

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