Blog

June 26, 2012

L.A. Printex v. Aeropostale III – Copyright Registration Errors

This third post discussing the L.A. Printex case concerns the effect of errors in copyright applications. The defendants sought summary judgment on the ground that L.A. Printex’s registration should be held invalid because its designs were registered as an unpublished collection, but included two designs that previously had been published.

The rule, however, is “inadvertent mistakes on registration certificates do not invalidate a copyright and thus do not bar infringement actions, unless the alleged infringer has relied to its detriment on the mistake, or the claimant intended to defraud the Copyright Office by making the misstatement.” The court held that the error did not invalidate the registration or render the certificate of registration incapable of supporting a copyright infringement claim. There was no evidence that L.A. Printex knew that the two designs had been published at the time it submitted its application for copyright registration, or that it intended to defraud the Copyright Office. Upon learning of its registration error, L.A. Printex corrected it. It filed an application for supplementary registration, communicated with the Copyright Office about the error through email and phone correspondence, and filed a second application for supplementary registration. Moreover, the Copyright Office’s decision to issue a supplementary registration after it was told of the two designs’ prior publication shows that the error was not one that “if known, would have caused the Register of Copyrights to refuse registration.