SCOTUSblog by Howard M. Wasserman 3/23/2020
A state cannot be sued for copyright infringement because Congress did not validly abrogate sovereign immunity when it enacted the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990, the Supreme Court held Monday in Allen v. Cooper. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion for six justices; Justice Clarence Thomas joined the opinion in part; and Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concurred in the judgment.
The case arose from a salvage operation for Blackbeard’s flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge, which sank off the coast of North Carolina in 1718 after a “reign over the seas†that was “short-lived.†Petitioner Frederick Allen was hired to document the salvage operation. He sued North Carolina when the state published some of his photos and videos without his permission and without payment.
The court held that Allen’s argument that the CRCA validly abrogated state sovereign immunity was foreclosed by the court’s 1999 decision in Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, which held that the Patent Remedy Act of 1990, enacted at the same time as the CRCA, did not validly abrogate sovereign immunity. Florida Prepaid held that Congress could not abrogate sovereign immunity using its powers under the intellectual property clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which empowers Congress to secure to authors and inventors the exclusive rights in their writings and discoveries. The power to protect copyrights and patents derives from one constitutional source. If Congress cannot abrogate for patents, as Florida Prepaid established, it cannot abrogate for copyrights, and for the same reasons.
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/03/opinion-analysis-congress-cannot-subject-states-to-suit-for-pirating-and-plundering-copyrighted-material/#more-292618
