Opinion ID: 183490
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Copyright Statute of Limitations

Text: Civil actions under the Copyright Act must be brought within three years after the claim has accrued. 17 U.S.C. § 507(b). An ownership claim accrues only once, when a reasonably diligent plaintiff would have been put on inquiry as to the existence of a right. Stone v. Williams, 970 F.2d 1043, 1048 (2d Cir. 1992). Under this rubric, any number of events can trigger the accrual of an ownership claim, including [a]n express assertion of sole authorship or ownership. Netzer v. Continuity Graphic Assocs., Inc., 963 F.Supp. 1308, 1315 (S.D.N.Y.1997) (citing Zuill v. Shanahan, 80 F.3d 1366, 1370 (9th Cir.1996)); accord Merchant v. Levy, 92 F.3d 51, 56 (2d Cir.1996) (citing Stone, 970 F.2d at 1048). By contrast, an infringement action may be commenced within three years of any infringing act, regardless of any prior acts of infringement; we have applied the three-year limitations period to bar only recovery for infringing acts occurring outside the three-year period. See Merchant, 92 F.3d at 57 n. 8. Here, BRB and Schlein rejected Kwan's express assertion of authorship in December 1998, and then published the first edition of FIOL, which did not list Kwan as an author, in January 1999. On the facts of this case, there is no question that Kwan was aware of the dispute regarding her rights to FIOL by January 1999, when the first edition was published, and therefore, her ownership claim accrued at that time. Because Kwan did not file suit until December 2004, more than three years after the publication of the first edition and indeed, more than three years after publication of the second editionany ownership claim relating to FIOL is untimely. Kwan acknowledges that any claims relating to the first and second editions of FIOL, both of which were published in 1999, are time-barred regardless of how they are characterized. Kwan argues, however, that she has two timely causes of action for copyright infringement relating to the publication of the third and fourth editions of FIOL, because they were published less than three years before Kwan filed suit. We disagree. To maintain an action for infringement, a plaintiff must establish (1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2) copying of constituent elements of the work that are original. Feist Publ'ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., Inc., 499 U.S. 340, 361, 111 S.Ct. 1282, 113 L.Ed.2d 358 (1991). In many infringement cases, the first element (ownership) is not in dispute. For example, when Bright Tunes sued former Beatles guitarist George Harrison for infringing the copyright in He's So Fine, there was no question that Bright Tunes owned the copyright to the song. See Bright Tunes Music Corp. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., 420 F.Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y.1976). The issue was whether, in creating My Sweet Lord, Harrison had copied too much from He's So Fine. See id. at 180-81. Having found that the two songs were virtually identical, the district court concluded that he had. Id. Unlike Bright Tunes, the dispute over FIOL does not involve the nature, extent or scope, of copying, and therefore, ownership forms the backbone of the infringement claim at issue here. That is, the dispute involves who wrote FIOL in the first placewhether Kwan's editorial contributions to FIOL were significant enough to qualify her as the author and therefore owner of the copyright in FIOL. Indeed, because coauthors cannot sue one another for copyright infringement, see Weissmann v. Freeman, 868 F.2d 1313, 1318 (2d Cir.1989), Kwan cannot recover unless she was the sole author of FIOL. When confronted with analogous facts, a number of district courts in this Circuit have held that infringement claims like Kwan's are time-barred as a matter of law where, as here, the underlying ownership claim is time-barred. In Big East Entm't, Inc. v. Zomba Enters., Inc., for example, a court held plaintiff's infringement claim time-barred because it was based entirely upon its alleged ownership of [musical] compositions, which plaintiff had failed to litigate for more than a decade. 453 F.Supp.2d 788, 796 (S.D.N.Y.2006), aff'd on other grounds, 259 Fed.Appx. 413 (2d Cir. 2008). The court explained that the statute of limitations cannot be defeated by portraying an action as one for infringement when copyright ownership rights are the true matter at issue. Id. at 795. Likewise, in Ortiz v. Guitian Bros. Music Inc., an action relating to a series of musical works to be used as a movie score, a court held copyright claims time-barred because plaintiff was aware of a dispute regarding ownership of the copyrights in question more than three years before he filed suit. No. 07 Civ. 3897, 2008 WL 4449314 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 29, 2008). The court wrote that, [w]here, as here, a plaintiff's copyright ownership is not conceded (and, in fact, the defendant holds a prior copyright registration certificate for the disputed work), copyright ownership, and not infringement, is the gravamen of the plaintiff's claim to which the statute of limitations is applied. Id. at . Two of our sister circuits have adopted similar formulations. See Roger Miller Music, Inc. v. Sony/ATV Publ'g, LLC, 477 F.3d 383, 389-90 (6th Cir.2007) (When claims for both infringement and ownership are alleged, the infringement claim is timely only if the corresponding ownership claim is also timely.); Zuill v. Shanahan, 80 F.3d 1366, 1371 (9th Cir.1996) (Mr. Shanahan's plain and express repudiation in 1986 and 1987 of any claim to co-ownership caused Mr. Zuill's and Mr. Rossi's action, if any, to accrue, so the district court properly found the action to be barred by the statute of limitations.... Creation, rather than infringement, was the gravamen of plaintiffs' co-ownership claim, so the claim did not accrue upon subsequent publication.). We hold that the same principles govern the outcome of this case. Where, as here, the ownership claim is time-barred, and ownership is the dispositive issue, any attendant infringement claims must fail.