Ninth Circuit Reversed, Based On Longstanding Copyright Practices.

Plaintiff, a stock photography agency, registered large numbers of photographs at a time. Plaintiff licensed a publishing company to use pictures it had registered, and brought an action against the publishing company based on the payment of inadequate fees. The district court dismissed the claims on the ground that the registrations of the photographs with the Register of Copyrights were contrary to a statutory requirement of titles and authors. The Ninth Circuit framed the issue as “whether the Register could prescribe a form and grant certificates extending registration to the individual photographs at issue where the names of each of the photographers were not provided, and titles for each of the photographs were not provided, on the applications.” The appeals court noted that one can own a copyright without registering, as registration is permissive and not mandatory.  The court stated: “Though an owner has property rights without registration, he needs to register the copyright to sue for infringement.” In reversing the district court’s dismissal, the Ninth Circuit stated: “The stock agencies through their trade association worked out what they should do to register images with the Register of Copyrights, the Copyright Office established a clear procedure and the stock agencies followed it. The Copyright Office has maintained its procedure for three decades, spanning multiple administrations. The livelihoods of photographers and stock agencies have long been founded on their compliance with the Register’s reasonable interpretation of the statute. Their reliance upon a reasonable and longstanding interpretation should be honored. Denying the fruits of reliance by citizens on a longstanding administrative practice reasonably construing a statute is unjust.” (Alaska Stock, LLC v. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company (Ninth Cir.; March 18, 2014)747 F.3d 673.)