Opinion ID: 613803
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutionality of the Copyright Act After Feltner

Text: Tenenbaum did not clearly make the argument that Feltner renders 504(c) unconstitutional to the district court, and so it is waived. See Dillon v. Select Portfolio Servicing, 630 F.3d 75, 82 (1st Cir. 2011). Even were the argument not waived, it is both wrong and foreclosed by our circuit precedent. In Segrets, Inc. v. Gillman Knitwear Co., 207 F.3d 56 (1st Cir.2000), we considered Feltner 's impact on a claim for statutory damages under § 504(c). We held that Feltner required remand to the district court so that a jury could determine both whether the infringements at issue were willful and the proper measure of statutory damages, necessarily rejecting any notion that statutory damages under § 504(c) were no longer available after Feltner . Id. at 63. We followed the same reasoning in Venegas-Hernandez v. Sonolux Records, 370 F.3d 183, 191-94 (1st Cir.2004) (interpreting and applying § 504(c) after Feltner ). Our sister circuits have likewise concluded that Feltner did not render § 504(c) unconstitutional. See, e.g., BMG Music v. Gonzalez , 430 F.3d 888, 892-93 (7th Cir. 2005) (upholding statutory damages award under § 504(c) despite claim that Feltner rendered such an award unconstitutional); Columbia Pictures Television, Inc. v. Krypton Broad. of Birmingham, Inc., 259 F.3d 1186, 1192 (9th Cir.2001) (rejecting argument that Feltner rendered statutory damages provision of the Copyright Act... unconstitutional in its entirety and concluding Feltner in no way implies that copyright plaintiffs are no longer able to seek statutory damages under the Copyright Act). This conclusion is also required by Supreme Court precedent. Where the Court has found a particular federal statute to deprive defendants of jury rights in violation of the Seventh Amendment, [8] the Court has deemed the offending portions of the statute inoperative while leaving the statute otherwise intact. See, e.g., Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412, 417 n. 3, 107 S.Ct. 1831, 95 L.Ed.2d 365 (1987) (upholding enforceability of Clean Water Act even though [n]othing in the language of the... Act or its legislative history implies any congressional intent to grant defendants the right to a jury trial and the Seventh Amendment required that defendants be given such a jury trial right).