[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 17-14110

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 1:17-cv-00414-TCB

FASTCASE, INC., 

 Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

LAWRITER, LLC, 

 Defendant-Appellee.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Northern District of Georgia

________________________

(October 29, 2018)

Before TJOFLAT and JORDAN, Circuit Judges, and HINKLE,

* District Judge.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge: 

 

* Honorable Robert Lewis Hinkle, United States District Judge for the Northern District 

of Florida, sitting by designation.

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Fastcase, Inc., appeals the District Court’s dismissal of its suit under the 

Declaratory Judgment Act against Lawriter, LLC. The District Court held that it 

lacked subject-matter jurisdiction under 21 U.S.C. § 1331 because Fastcase’s 

complaint presented no federal question. The District Court also held that it lacked 

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a) because Fastcase failed to satisfy the 

jurisdictional minimum. Because both of these rulings were erroneous, we vacate 

the District Court’s order and remand the case for further proceedings. 

I. BACKGROUND

Fastcase and Lawriter are competitors in the market for legal research 

services. Both companies provide searchable online databases of public law, 

including federal and state statutes, administrative rules and regulations, and 

judicial decisions. This case concerns the right to publish the Georgia 

Administrative Rules and Regulations (“Georgia Regulations”) for use by lawyers 

and law firms. 

In 2010, Fastcase entered into a contract with the State Bar of Georgia under 

which Fastcase was to provide a database of Georgia law, including the Georgia 

Regulations. In exchange for providing this database to all 40,000-plus members 

of the Georgia Bar, Fastcase receives an annual per-member fee. To keep its 

collection of Georgia law current, Fastcase visited the official Georgia Regulations 

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page on the Georgia Secretary of State’s (“Secretary”) website multiple times per 

week.

The Secretary is required to publish the Georgia Regulations and make them 

available to the public. O.C.G.A. § 50-13-7. In 2015, the Secretary delegated this 

duty to Lawriter pursuant to a contract that requires Lawriter to publish the 

regulations on the Secretary’s website. Specifically, the contract requires Lawriter 

to “make the Georgia Regulations continuously and freely available twenty-four

(24) hours a day, seven (7) days a week for viewing and searching by the general 

public via internet connection,” and further provides that “this shall be done at no 

charge and without the requirements of any passwords, codes, or requirements of 

any kind.” Under the contract, Lawriter is also permitted “to sell complete copies 

of the entire set of rules and regulations or individual chapters of the rules and 

regulations at such reasonable prices and terms that Lawriter may determine at its 

sole discretion.” The contract further obliges the Secretary to pay Lawriter $5,000 

quarterly, but this obligation is waived every time Lawriter sells a “complete set”1

of the Georgia Regulations. 

On December 21, 2015, Lawriter sent a letter to Fastcase accusing Fastcase 

of violating Lawriter’s rights by providing users access to the Georgia Regulations 

 

1 The contract is not clear on what constitutes a “complete set”—i.e., whether the term 

refers only to a complete hardbound set or includes a complete digital set. Nothing in this appeal 

turns on the answer to this question. However, whether a “complete set” includes a digital copy 

is a question the District Court will likely have to grapple with on remand. See infra note 10.

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as part of a fee-based service. The letter demanded that Fastcase stop offering the 

Georgia Regulations; otherwise, Lawriter would “take those steps Lawriter 

deem[ed] necessary to protect its legal rights, which may include litigation.” On 

February 3, 2016, Fastcase filed its first suit against Lawriter seeking declaratory 

relief and a permanent injunction that would prevent Lawriter from interfering with 

Fastcase’s publication of the Georgia Regulations. In its complaint, Fastcase 

asserted that Lawriter has no legal rights, by contract or copyright, to restrict 

publication of the Georgia Regulations. The District Court dismissed this case for 

lack of subject-matter jurisdiction both because Lawriter did not currently hold a 

registered copyright and, therefore, could not have brought an infringement claim

in federal court, and because Fastcase failed to satisfy the jurisdictional minimum. 

During the first suit, Lawriter added a terms of use policy (“Terms of Use”) 

to the Secretary’s website. Following this addition, a viewer wishing to access the 

Georgia Regulations must agree to the Terms of Use, which provide: 

• You agree that you will not sell, will not license, and will not otherwise 

make available in exchange for anything of value, anything that you 

download, print, or copy from this site. 

• You agree that you will not copy, print, or download any portion of the 

regulations posted on this site exceeding a single chapter of the regulations 

for sale, license, or other transfer to a third party, except that you may quote 

a reasonable portion of the regulations in the course of rendering 

professional advice. 

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• If you violate this agreement, or if you access or use this website in violation 

of this agreement, you agree that Lawriter will suffer damages of at least 

$20,000. 

A week after the first suit was dismissed, Fastcase filed this suit under the 

Declaratory Judgment Act. According to Fastcase’s new complaint, the District 

Court had jurisdiction because Lawriter’s threatened litigation included copyright 

infringement claims and state law claims preempted by the Copyright Act. The 

complaint also alleged diversity jurisdiction on the grounds that the potential 

liability Fastcase faced for violating Lawriter’s Terms of Use exceeded $75,000. 

As in the first suit, the District Court dismissed Fastcase’s complaint for lack of 

jurisdiction. 

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review a district court’s ruling on questions of jurisdiction de novo. 

United States ex rel. Saldivar v. Fresenius Med. Care Holdings, Inc., 841 F.3d 927, 

932 (11th Cir. 2016). 

III. DISCUSSION

“[T]he Declaratory Judgment Act does not, of itself, confer jurisdiction upon 

federal courts.” Stuart Weitzman, LLC v. Microcomputer Res., Inc., 542 F.3d 859, 

861–62 (11th Cir. 2008). Rather, it “allow[s] parties to precipitate suits that 

otherwise might need to wait for the declaratory relief defendant to bring a 

coercive action.” Household Bank v. JFS Grp., 320 F.3d 1249, 1253 (11th Cir. 

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2003) (alteration in original) (citing Gulf States Paper Corp. v. Ingram, 811 F.2d 

1464, 1467 (11th Cir. 1987)). Accordingly, “we do not look to the face of the 

declaratory judgment complaint in order to determine the presence of a federal 

question.” Stuart Weitzman, 542 F.3d at 862 (quoting Hudson Ins. Co. v. Am. 

Elec. Corp., 957 F.2d 826, 828 (11th Cir. 1992)). Instead, we “must determine 

whether or not the cause of action anticipated by the declaratory judgment plaintiff 

arises under federal law.” Id. 

As noted above, Fastcase alleges two bases for federal jurisdiction. First, 

Fastcase argues that Lawriter’s threatened copyright infringement claims and 

preempted state law claims confer jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1338(a).2

 

Second, Fastcase alleges federal diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 

1332(a)(1). We address these jurisdictional bases in turn. 

A.

As the District Court observed, Lawriter’s threatened litigation against 

Fastcase raises potential copyright infringement claims. Ordinarily, this would be 

enough to confer jurisdiction—federal courts, after all, have exclusive jurisdiction 

over “any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to . . . 

copyrights.” 28 U.S.C. § 1338(a); Sullivan v. Naturalis, Inc., 5 F.3d 1410, 1413 

(11th Cir. 1993) (quoting T.B. Harms Co. v. Eliscu, 339 F.2d 823, 828 (2d Cir. 

 

2 Section 1338(a) provides, in relevant part, that “district courts shall have original 

jurisdiction of any civil action arising under any Act of Congress relating to . . . copyrights.”

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1964)) (recognizing that a claim “arises under” the Copyright Act if it “require[es]

construction of the Act”). But the District Court ultimately held that it lacked 

jurisdiction over the case because Lawriter had not yet registered a copyright in the 

Georgia Regulations. 

In reaching its conclusion, the District Court relied on our decision in Stuart 

Weitzman, LLC v. Microcomputer Resources, Inc. In Stuart Weitzman, this Court 

considered whether the Copyright Act’s registration requirement3 acts as a 

jurisdictional bar to copyright infringement claims. 542 F.3d at 863. There, as 

here, the plaintiff brought suit under the Declaratory Judgment Act anticipating 

copyright infringement claims as well as state law claims allegedly preempted by 

the Copyright Act. Id. at 862. And also there, as here, the copyrighted works at 

issue had not been registered. Id. at 863. At the time, the consensus among federal 

appellate courts was that § 411(a)’s registration requirement was jurisdictional. Id. 

(citing Walton v. United States, 80 Fed. Cl. 251, 260 (2008) (collecting cases)). 

Moreover, this Court had previously held “§ 411(a)’s ‘registration requirement [to 

be] a jurisdictional prerequisite to an infringement suit.’” Id. (quoting M.G.B. 

Homes, Inc. v. Ameron Homes, Inc., 903 F.2d 1486, 1488 & n.4 (11th Cir. 1990)). 

Thus, because the declaratory relief defendant had not yet registered the 

 

3 17 U.S.C. § 411(a) provides, in relevant part, that “no civil action for infringement of 

the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of 

the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.” 

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copyrighted works at issue, we held that the anticipated infringement claims could 

not confer subject-matter jurisdiction. Id.

Since our decision in Stuart Weitzman, however, the law on § 411(a)’s 

registration requirement has changed. In Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, the 

Supreme Court held that while § 411(a)’s registration requirement remains a 

“precondition to filing a claim,” it “does not restrict a federal court’s subject-matter 

jurisdiction.” 559 U.S. 154, 157, 130 S. Ct. 1237, 1241 (2010). Thus, while a 

complaint claiming infringement of an unregistered copyright can be dismissed for 

failure to state a claim, it cannot be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. 

To be sure, the facts of Muchnick and this case are substantially different. 

As the District Court noted, the decision in Muchnick was made in the context of a 

class action certification for the purposes of settlement approval, not in the context 

of a declaratory judgment. But the District Court did not explain why this

distinction mattered or why we should decline to extend Muchnick beyond 

Muchnick-like facts. Indeed, this Court has already explained—in an appeal from 

dismissal of a copyright infringement action, a factual setting very different from 

Muchnick—that § 411(a) is no longer a jurisdictional bar. Fourth Estate Pub. 

Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC, 856 F.3d 1338, 1339–40 (11th Cir. 2017), 

cert. granted, 138 S. Ct. 2707 (mem.). See also Roberts v. Gordy, 877 F.3d 1024, 

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1028 (11th Cir. 2017) (explaining that, in light of Muchnik, “a federal court’s 

jurisdiction is not conditional on a [§ 411(a)] registration”). 

Nevertheless, Lawriter cites two Eleventh Circuit decisions for the 

proposition that “this Court . . . ha[s] dismissed copyright infringement claims 

involving unregistered works post-Muchnick.”4 Appellee’s Br. at 20. And so it 

has. But rather than supporting Lawriter’s argument, these cases reinforce the 

conclusion that § 411(a)’s registration requirement is a non-jurisdictional 

precondition to suit. 

In the first case, Dowbenko v. Google, Inc., the plaintiff’s copyright 

infringement claim was dismissed for failure to comply with § 411(a)’s registration 

requirement. 582 F. App’x 801, 805 (11th Cir. 2014) (per curiam). Although the 

claim was dismissed, it was not dismissed for lack of jurisdiction; the 

Dowbenko Court recognized that “§ 411(a)’s registration requirement is not 

jurisdictional.” Id. Instead, the plaintiff’s claim was dismissed on a Rule 12(b)(6) 

motion because he “failed to plead that he registered the copyright to the [allegedly 

infringed] photograph.” Id. This result—that is, treating the registration 

requirement as an element of an infringement claim—suggests that § 411(a) is 

simply a “precondition to filing a [copyright-infringement] claim.” Id. (alteration 

in original) (quoting Muchnick, 559 U.S. at 157, 130 S. Ct. 1237). 

 

4 The District Court similarly relied on these two cases to demonstrate that Stuart 

Weitzman controlled this case even after Muchnick.

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Lawriter’s second case, Foundation for Lost Boys & Girls of Sudan, Inc. v. 

Alcon Entertainment, LLC, similarly fails to support Lawriter’s argument. In Lost 

Boys, plaintiffs brought a declaratory judgment action seeking a declaration of 

their exclusive rights to certain copyrighted works. No. 1:15-cv-00509-LMM,

2016 WL 4394486, *4 (N.D. Ga. Mar. 22, 2016). Defendants moved to dismiss 

the action under both Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6). Id at *1. As to the 12(b)(6) 

motion, the district court concluded that, because the plaintiffs had not registered 

their works under § 411(a), they could not maintain a claim for copyright 

infringement. Id. at *7. As to the 12(b)(1) motion, however, the district court 

acknowledged that the Supreme Court in Muchnick “determined that registration of 

a copyright was an element of a copyright infringement claim, and not a 

jurisdictional requirement.” Id. at *5. Accordingly, the district court rejected 

defendants’ claim that it lacked jurisdiction simply because plaintiffs’ works were 

unregistered. Id.

Because § 411(a)’s registration requirement is not jurisdictional, the District 

Court here had jurisdiction over the suit despite the fact that Lawriter had not 

registered a copyright in the Georgia Regulations. Accordingly, the District Court 

erred in dismissing Fastcase’s complaint for lack of federal-question jurisdiction. 

B.

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While there is no dispute that the parties are completely diverse, the District 

Court also concluded that it lacked diversity jurisdiction because Fastcase failed to 

satisfy the amount-in-controversy requirement. For the reasons explained below, 

this was error. 

1.

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. To invoke a federal court’s 

diversity jurisdiction, a plaintiff must claim, among other things, that the amount in 

controversy exceeds $75,000. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a). “When a plaintiff seeks 

injunctive or declaratory relief, the amount in controversy is the monetary value of 

the object of the litigation from the plaintiff’s perspective.” Federated Mut. Ins. 

Co. v. McKinnon Motors, LLC, 329 F.3d 805, 807 (11th Cir. 2003) (quoting Cohen 

v. Office Depot, Inc., 204 F.3d 1069, 1077 (11th Cir. 2000)). Ordinarily, a plaintiff 

need only plead an amount sufficient to satisfy the amount-in-controversy 

requirement in good faith. Id. The plaintiff’s good-faith pleading will be second 

guessed only if it “appear[s] to a legal certainty that the claim is really for less than 

the jurisdictional amount.” St. Paul Mercury Indem. Co. v. Red Cab Co., 303 U.S. 

283, 289, 58 S. Ct. 586, 590 (1938). However, when the plaintiff pleads an 

unspecified amount of damages, it bears the burden of proving by a preponderance 

of the evidence that the claim on which jurisdiction is based exceeds the 

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jurisdictional minimum.5

 See McKinnon Motors, 329 F.3d at 807. This additional 

requirement is “warranted because there is simply no estimate of damages to which 

a court may defer.” Tapscott, 77 F.3d at 1356–57.

Fastcase argues that it satisfies the jurisdictional minimum in two ways. 

First, Fastcase claims that its contract with the Georgia Bar will be terminated if it

is unable to deliver the Georgia Regulations and that this contract is worth well 

over $75,000. Because this is a claim for an indeterminate amount of damages, 

Fastcase was required to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that its inability 

to access the Georgia Regulations would lead to a loss of its contract with the 

Georgia Bar, and that this loss would exceed $75,000. Fastcase did not make this 

showing, and we thus agree with the District Court that, as to this allegation, 

Fastcase failed to satisfy the amount-in-controversy requirement. 

Fastcase also argues that in order to maintain its contract with the Georgia 

Bar it will need to visit the Secretary’s website, copy the Georgia Regulations, and 

thereby violate Lawriter’s terms of use on a daily basis—each violation subjecting 

 

5 The District Court suggested that the preponderance requirement for pleading the 

amount in controversy applies to all declaratory judgments. However, as Tapscott and 

subsequent cases explain, this heightened standard only applies to claims involving unspecified 

or indeterminate damages. See McKinnon Motors, 329 F.3d at 807; Tapscott v. MS Dealer Serv. 

Corp., 77 F.3d 1353, 1356–57 (11th Cir. 1996), abrogated on other grounds by Cohen, 204 F.3d 

at 1072–77. It is not the type of relief that triggers the preponderance requirement, but instead 

the specificity with which the plaintiff pleads the amount in controversy. 

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Fastcase to liquidated damages of at least $20,000.6 Although the exact quantum 

of liquidated liability Fastcase might accrue is necessarily unclear, it certainly is 

not the case that this claim presents “no estimate of damages to which a court may 

defer.” Id. at 1357. To provide an up-to-date copy of the Georgia Regulations to 

its customers, Fastcase alleges that it will violate Lawriter’s Terms of Use “at least 

daily, and possibly thousands of times every day, depending on how many 

members access Fastcase’s Georgia Database.” Because violating these terms as 

few as four times would subject Fastcase to a threat of liability in excess of

$75,000, we conclude that Fastcase’s potential liability was not too speculative to 

satisfy the amount-in-controversy requirement. 

2.

The District Court also concluded that the jurisdictional minimum was not 

satisfied because Fastcase’s potential liability could not be used as a basis for

satisfying the amount-in-controversy requirement. In reaching this conclusion, the 

District Court relied on two district court opinions that, in turn, relied on our 

explanation in Cohen v. Office Depot, Inc. that “the value of the requested 

injunctive relief [in determining the amount in controversy] is the monetary value 

 

6 In its brief, Lawriter suggests that the liquated damages clause of its Terms of Use 

might not apply “per occurrence”—that is, that Fastcase might only face $ 20,000 in liquated 

damages for repeatedly violating the Terms of Use. Appellee’s Br. at 22. But Lawriter does not 

commit itself to this position, nor is it clear from the Terms of Use that the liquated damages 

clause does not apply per occurrence. For these reasons, we conclude that the potential liability 

Fastcase faces from violating the Terms of Use accrues per occurrence. 

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of the benefit that would flow to the plaintiff if the injunction were granted.” 204 

F.3d at 1077. It is unclear how the District Court read this language to exclude

Fastcase’s potential liability from the amount-in-controversy calculus—

presumably, it read the word “benefit” to exclude potential liability. Whatever the 

reason, this conclusion is neither suggested by Cohen nor consistent with Eleventh

Circuit precedent. 

First, Cohen was not concerned with the question of whether potential 

liability could be used to determine the amount in controversy. Instead, this Court 

in Cohen concluded that the amount in controversy was not satisfied because the

value of the plaintiffs’ injunctive relief was too speculative. Id. Far from creating 

new doctrine, the language from Cohen that the District Court relied on here was 

meant simply to restate the plaintiff-viewpoint rule that this Court adopted7 in 

Ericsson GE Mobile Communications, Inc. v. Motorola Communications & 

Electronics, Inc.

8

 That rule requires that courts, in determining the amount in 

 

7 To be clear, the view of this Court in Ericsson was that the former Fifth Circuit had 

already adopted the plaintiff-viewpoint rule. Ericsson GE Mobile Commc’ns, Inc. v. Motorola 

Commc’ns & Elecs., Inc., 120 F.3d 216, 219 (11th Cir. 1997). Our opinion in Ericsson simply 

made this explicit. 

8 This is plainly true when one views the quote from Cohen in context: 

When a plaintiff seeks injunctive or declaratory relief, the amount in 

controversy is the monetary value of the object of the litigation from the 

plaintiff’s perspective. In other words, the value of the requested injunctive relief 

is the monetary value of the benefit that would flow to the plaintiff if the 

injunction were granted.

Cohen, 204 F.3d at 1077 (emphasis added) (citations omitted). 

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controversy, “measure the value of the object of litigation solely from the 

plaintiff’s perspective” rather than considering the value of the litigation from 

either the plaintiff’s or defendant’s perspective. Id. at 218. But it does not follow 

from the plaintiff-viewpoint rule that the plaintiff’s potential liability cannot count 

toward the amount in controversy. 

Moreover, this Court has previously considered a plaintiff’s potential 

liability in determining the amount in controversy. In Ericsson we explained that 

while the amount in controversy can only be assessed from the plaintiff’s 

perspective, “the plaintiff’s claim for monetary damages need not, by itself, exceed 

the requisite statutory amount because the immediate financial consequences of the 

litigation to the plaintiff . . . [e.g.,] the financial benefit of not having to pay the 

interest contracted to be charged . . . may also be considered in calculating the 

amount in controversy.” Id. at 220 (original emphasis omitted; emphasis added). 

Decisions of the former Fifth Circuit amply support this view.9 And while many

 

9 See, e.g., Duderwicz v. Sweetwater Sav. Ass’n, 595 F.2d 1008, 1014 (5th Cir. 1979) 

(recognizing that former Fifth Circuit cases “seem to support the proposition that the value of the 

matter in controversy is measured not by the monetary judgment which the plaintiff may recover, 

but by the judgment’s pecuniary consequence”); Stonewall Ins. Co. v. Lopez, 544 F.2d 198, 199 

(5th Cir. 1976) (per curiam) (concluding that the amount in controversy includes both the 

insurance company’s potential liability and the costs associated with defending the underlying 

action against the insured); Mut. Benefit Health & Accident Ass’n v. Fortenberry, 98 F.2d 570, 

571 (5th Cir. 1938) (“[O]bligations [plaintiff] may be compelled to pay in the future are not 

merely contingent and enter into the amount in controversy.”); N.Y. Life Ins. Co. v. Swift, 38 F.2d 

175, 176 (5th Cir. 1930) (“[T]he object to be gained by the bill is the test of the jurisdictional 

amount; in other words, the value of the right to be protected.”). As decisions rendered by the 

former Fifth Circuit before close of business on September 30, 1981, these cases are precedential 

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of these older cases concern insurance companies’ liability for contested policies, 

the general principle they stand for applies to plaintiffs of all stripes. 

Here, Fastcase must access the Georgia Regulations “at least daily, and 

possibly thousands of times every day” to maintain a current database of Georgia 

law. Every time it accesses the Georgia Regulations, Fastcase exposes itself to 

$20,000 of liquidated liability. The “immediate financial consequence[],” id., of 

the declaratory judgment Fastcase seeks is that it would no longer be subject to this 

liability. Consequently, we conclude that the amount-in-controversy requirement

is satisfied and diversity jurisdiction is proper.10

IV.

We accordingly vacate the District Court’s order and remand the case for 

further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. 

SO ORDERED. 

 

in the Eleventh Circuit. See Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir. 1981) 

(en banc). 

10 Although we express no view on the matter here, the District Court on remand should 

consider whether the Secretary is a required party under Rule 19. The Secretary arguably has an 

interest in these proceedings: under their contract, the Secretary is relieved of an entire $5,000 

quarterly payment every time Lawriter sells a “complete set” of the Georgia Regulations. 

Whether Fastcase’s piecemeal copying of the Georgia Regulations threatens this interest such 

that the Secretary is a required party is a determination we leave to the District Court. 

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