Copyright case: Fastcase, Inc. v. Lawriter, LLC, USA

The Copyright Act’s registration requirement was a non-jurisdictional element of a copyright infringement claim; therefore, a lawsuit brought by online legal research provider Fastcase, Inc., against a competitor to resolve a dispute over the publication of regulations for the State of Georgia should not have been dismissed on the ground that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over potential copyright claims because the competitor had not registered a copyright in the regulations, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled. The appeals court also determined that Fastcase’s potential liability for violating the competitor’s terms of use by accessing the regulations on a daily basis was sufficient to satisfy the $75,000 amount in controversy required to confer federal jurisdictional over the case (Fastcase, Inc. v. Lawriter, LLC, October 29, 2018, Tjoflat, G.).

Case date: 29 October 2018

Case number: No. 17-14110

Court: United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.