English Premier League’s claim against YouTube hits copyright registration hurdle in the US courts
Friday July 10th 2009, by Piers Strickland
Executive Summary: US Judge holds that foreign companies are required to register their copyrights in order to safeguard their rights to claim statutory damages under US law.
The English Premier League is one of the plaintiffs alleging infringement of copyright before the US Courts against YouTube in respect of unauthorised football content appearing on the YouTube platform.
YouTube (now owned by Google) argued that because the Premier League had failed to register its copyrights, then this prevented the Premier League from claiming statutory damages for copyright infringement.
The Premier League argued that requiring foreign copyright owners to register their copyrights would violate the Berne Convention. The Berne Convention is an international copyright treaty, to which the US has signed up. The Berne Convention states that the enjoyment and exercise of copyright “shall not be subject to any formality“, i.e. such as registration. In the UK, copyright subsists automatically upon creation, subject to certain qualifying criteria.
The US Judge disagreed, stating that the US considered that the requirement, that foreign copyrights must be registered, was compatible with the US’s obligations under the Berne Convention. The Judge went on to state that that non-US companies must register all works with the US Copyright Office, within three months of first publication of such works, if they ever wish to claim statutory damages for any subsequent infringement of these works.
Ultimately, the Premier League’s case for copyright infringement against YouTube in this respect wasn’t fatally damaged as it appears that they were able to rely on a different legal provision to retain their right to claim statutory damages.
However, this case serves as a reminder for copyright owners to consider registering their copyrights in the US, if they want to protect their ability to recover statutory damages before a US court.
