Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-877_dc8f.pdf
Page Number: 5.0

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ALLEN v. COOPER 

Opinion of the Court 

Not so the Revenge.  She sank beneath the waters, where 
she lay undisturbed for nearly 300 years.

In 1996, a marine salvage company named Intersal, Inc.,
discovered the shipwreck.  Under federal and state law, the 
wreck  belongs  to  North  Carolina.    See  102  Stat.  433,  43 
U. S. C.  §2105(c);  N. C.  Gen.  Stat.  Ann.  §121–22  (2019). 
But the State contracted with Intersal to take charge of the
recovery  activities.    Intersal  in  turn  retained  petitioner
Frederick Allen, a local videographer, to document the op-
eration.  For over a decade, Allen created videos and photos 
of divers’ efforts to salvage the Revenge’s guns, anchors, and
other remains.  He registered copyrights in all those works.
This suit arises from North Carolina’s publication of some 
of Allen’s videos and photos.  Allen first protested in 2013 
that the State was infringing his copyrights by uploading 
his work to its website without permission.  To address that 
allegation,  North  Carolina  agreed  to  a  settlement  paying
Allen $15,000 and laying out the parties’ respective rights
to the materials.  But Allen and the State soon found them-
selves embroiled in another dispute.  Allen complained that
North Carolina had impermissibly posted five of his videos
online and used one of his photos in a newsletter.  When the 
State declined to admit wrongdoing, Allen filed this action
in Federal District Court.  It charges the State with copy-
right  infringement  (call  it  a  modern  form  of  piracy)  and 
seeks money damages.

North Carolina moved to dismiss the suit on the ground
of sovereign immunity.  It invoked the general rule that fed-
eral courts cannot hear suits brought by individuals against 
nonconsenting  States.  See  State  Defendants’  Memoran-
dum  in  No.  15–627  (EDNC),  Doc.  50,  p. 7.    But  Allen  re-
sponded that an exception to the rule applied because Con-
gress  had  abrogated  the  States’  sovereign  immunity  from
suits like his.  See Plaintiffs’ Response, Doc. 57, p. 7.  The 
Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (CRCA or Act)