for bare assignments of the crude causes of action and that therefore the holder of such a purported assignment does not have standing to bring a copyright infringement claim against  infringer and in support of that position i'd like to start by talking about the the actual words found in the statute and the statutory scheme in which they are found section five zero one of the copyright act of course refers only to authorizing holders of the exclusive rights copyright to bring copyright infringement cases another words copyright holders as the needs of interest and copyrights does not have the word only and it seems to me that you have to create the silences pregnant in order to say this is what the statute says well in this instance your honor in the second  was none discussed in the present case and the predicate deals with a madman but what i wanted to say about the necessity of reading the word only into the statute is that what must be recognized is that congress was as being that only a copyright proprietor could sue and congress was liberalizing that rule and when congress faced with a situation where only in big hands to says ok now we're acting section five  transferred the owner of the patent may retain the accrued cause of action they noted that exception but but for that they said it was inherent in the concept of a patent that the right to sue is part of the right to on and while while that language is not left is not entirely free of ambiguity it does seem that into a one day it could be read to permit exactly what the of equal force that's often applied and that is that congress knows how to say something when it doesn't say it that means they didn't decide to do it that chose as an action or so commonly a sign that it seems a little surprising when they're not assignable and i'm thinking when congress wants to prohibit assignment it's done so before with things like the anti assignment that match them to to the statutory scheme here which i think very much demonstrates the intent of congress congress included the statute of frauds with respect to transfers of exclusive rights and they have to be in writing the section two or four congress included provision for recording transfers and copyright in congress including provisions for resolving priorities among conflicting transfers of exclusive ri in section two zero five should there be conflicting transfers and the net of all of that is that the defendant in a copyright infringement claim has a high degree of likelihood of being able to look at the public record in the correct in the real estate area but here your honor the court was focused on who could sue the court was focused on protecting defendant i think your point the congress was full protecting defendants against a multipl requirement and did have a requirement or rather provision for resolving transfers prevented one kind of multiplicity of action namely where somebody could  statute of frauds in the priority provision and that's what i meant before when i was referring to the total congressional scheme as one that protected the defendant in an infringement case against the multiplicity could be sure that the owner of the exclusive right was in fact a matter of record in the copyright office and he was dealing with that person once you separate the owner of the right from the owner of the claim that protection no longer doesn't that read on the situation or not in other words if your fee infringement happens when i go before i have transferred the copyright interest i have the accrued cause of action let's place fit with that part city of action why is it that congress is balancing your joint there is no it is not the answer here for several reasons first first joined it will not always be possible it depends on whether the person who needs to be joined in his or her is not in the district where the case has been brought second there are practical problems and if if tony is the recipient of a claim for copyright infringement it may wish to s my disagreement five zero want to own one talks about who owns an exclusive right who's an exclusive owner how you transfer exclusive ownership and how you determine exclusive owners in the event of a conflict in transfers and five zero one says explosive owners are the people who get to sue it is a package i think they have to be read together and when read when read together in the aggregate they show the congress put together a scheme that did protect defendants against fraud that protect defendants against multiple transfers to protect defendants against inadvertent multiple transfers provided that it was recognized that the copyright the exclusive right to about the remedy of the right to sue the transfer bill so there is that there is i believe no indication that congress ever not in the legislative history and not in the face of the statute is there any indication that congress ever intended to permit a bear transfer and that gets back i mean i believe intellectual property is different from other statutory claims an invalid it is a species of right that exists only the i do think that there is a difference between a copyright which wouldn't exist but for but for the copyright act and something like a resume where there is a if you will a modification of the common entire law of assignments here in the copyright area i do think that the that the comprehensive statutory scheme that did expand the right to sue but only in the context of providing certain  something that's on my mind that bears on how to construe this so that you can educate me out of i'm thinking it's always a mistake to read a statute to provide more  for its beneficiaries than it does explicitly because the chances are it's beneficiaries got all they could and in this case the beneficiaries of the statute  a group with a particularly high degree of political clout it's hard to believe that if they wanted something they couldn't get it if we construe their protection it's so easy for me to get what they want through to protect themselves but if they assign that shows an action to somebody who goes have the ability to litigate it then they can get a remedy maybe that congress purposely left that door open and we shouldn't close it well i'd like to say two things about that one is there's no indication of congress intended to leave the door open but in addition i think it's important to recognize here that i don't believe  business or commercial reason to require a permit is signed it's an example that you gave copyright owners who do not wish or do not have the means to enforce their played in a huge organizational effort in a much smaller group than the people that write great unless it is kind of a joke that every cabdriver in los angeles has a script that illustrates the point that that there isn't a problem that requires assignment to get it solved copyright owner can appoint anybody who's willing to do it to be their attorney in fact but when when the case is brought it would be brought in the name of the copyright owner there wouldn't be any issues of race judicata there wouldn't be the problems of multiplicity i didn't finish giving examples of multiplicity and here for example there was an assignment of those claims that arise out of the script that leaves the copyright in the movie and the potential that fry can bar productions which is the action or and still holds the copyright in the movie could sue sony for an infringement of infringer infringed more than one of their rights to it could be more than one suit but at least you have zero knowledge that's positive because i want to see how this relates to the language i read out of five zero five zero one that is if driving the situation exclusive licenses are given for business reasons and they get a company by the right to sue here there's no there's no big business rationale and so the possible multiplicity is not limited by whatever business considerations will determine what licenses copyright owners grant what they don't create and in particular what i mean is here sony of course has continued to attempt to exploit its film  stepmom continuously including after the assignment and so we have a situation again to get to the multiplicity point where we can be sued if if this assignment is upheld by silver's for acts of copyright infringement prior to the assignment and then we can be sued by franken bob in addition to the first copyright in the movie we can be sued by franken bob for infringement of its copyright in the screenplay because they'd be bound by the principles of collateral stoppel that their copyright was invalid or sony established that its production is independent of any taint of having been produced with reference to this copyrighted material that bound by the principles of collateral stoppel and none of whom will be limited by the business principles that operate to limit what exclusive rights people in fact gather so you get multiplicity in that manner and you get you would still face the risk multiplicity even aside from the distinction that judge breyer just drew between past and future i'm thinking you could have somebody come out of the woodwork basically the core good afternoon i'm stephen glazer and i represent as you silver's i want to accomplish two things in my argument today first i want to demonstrate that everything about congressional intent everything we can and copyright but not on this issue and this particular issue the two areas of law are diversionary diverge significantly a patent is not subject to the same divisibility that a copyright not i mean there's no particular exclusive right listed among the six right that says so right but the statute says including and i think the clearest indicator  while he or she is the owner has independent significance of the instead of being the who phrased it so while phrase and i'm having trouble figuring out why congress would want to impose this limitation on the owner of a copyright that he can only sue while he's the owner but not want to prevent people who are not owners at all from suing i believe the section five zero one provides that when the time that there is an infringement whoever owns the rights has been infringed at that time has the right to sue for infringement of that right but it doesn't say anything about the inability the defendant has against the asson or he can assert against the ass and me and that's the law of assignment is in every circumstance that i'm aware of it and if there is any challenge to the discovery of the same way you would get discovery against somebody any independent person you have to go and get a commission or whatever the procedure is party like third party discovery you could certainly use the same tools but i would think that you'd find be able to find a way under the second provisions of section five zero one v two to join that party as well as a defendant trying to mr defendant if somebody else owns the cause of action and they didn't they didn't do anything that's actionable and from what i know about joyner you can either of someone either voluntarily join while he would join them voluntarily or involuntarily as as a plaintiff so that you could if that's just and be avoid the risk of multiple suits and make sure that anybody whose rights are affected by was that that assignment failed because the ass nor retained rights ok but now wants to know used to be when one of your objectives was to persuade us that the seventy six act did not change the law on a sign ability remember the court talks about the but again we don't have to play the button game of who owns the copyright this is simply an assignment of a chosen action and you don't need to be a proprietor of a copyright if you've been and once that question is answered only the person who owns the copyright at the time of the infringement and soon regardless of what assignments may be made and what the purchase and sale agreement may say between the old owner and the new owner the creators survive this committed while he is the owner clause has to die and i'm missing something or i respectfully disagree simply defines the person as it defines that at the point of infringement you look at who owns the writing that's been infringed and values the party in whom the cause of action accrues but you would say can transfer but who accrued for example claims that seek damages for emotional distress claims that seek to compensate someone for loss of reputation loss of consortium those are the kinds of  that are too personal to an individual to permit them to be assigned to somebody else which you explain to me leaving aside the words of the statute why the right law should be different in this  enter in terms not of statutory language but in terms of policy reasons i believe because it is the policy of the copyright act to allow a party right owner to divide his ownership interest in the copyright as much as he would like to as much of the statute permits and to alienate those rights specifically stated in the copyright act is that any of the rights that go to make up a copyright of of rights that go to make up a copyright including those you numerated in section one of specs and any subdivision of them can be transferred and on separately by using the word including both in the congressional  there is going to be one of these infinite set of the things that you can assign the copyright interest and along with that you may sign the cause of action but it does not seem to suggest that you can then further s that copyright interest from the crude cause of action it seems to read the two together owned and enforced separately modifies each subdivision of an exclusive right by you disagree with the review i think that's too literal and too specific of a reading for the simple reason that the overall policy of the copyright act is to allow the copyright owner to transferable and congress knows exactly how the states act if that's what it wants to say and particularly in light of the policy that you are one hundred two that these rights can be separately owned in transferred various different things with it and i don't see any difficulty seeing why they would say that you can't do what they've never said you can do in the first place or why we say you can't do what they have i think every federal statutory scheme is going to find in some manner the persons who have standing in the persons who are entitled to sue and the america first bank case the definition of who c causes of action and i want to state that there's nothing in any of these cases that discuss this doctrine that say these are the exclusive circumstances under which you can transfer copyrights but let's look at this and its practical effect because these are at bottom business transactions that occur every day and if you look at my scenario to this is one option available to the parties under this doctrine again there's nothing exclusive about it but it teaches us a lot under the reasoning was the court's view that the nature of the patent right is such that the cause of action for its infringement inheres in the property rights to exclude and therefore they cannot be separated and that reasoning has been followed for example in the trademark area and we are to take one example in the international christian consciousness case which is cited in the briefs of district court followed precisely that same reasoning with respect to trademarks to hold that barry playing for trademark infringement may not be assigned separately from ownership of the train leslie as the congress and the copyright act when it was how the courts interpreted the congressional enactment of zero nine yes it has been somewhat liberalized but it has never been liberalized to the extent of allowing a bare assignment to seventy six act is not permitted tha