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Shooter’s Rights Upheld Despite Technical Errors

If you file a tax return with “innocent” errors, you can expect Bad Things to happen. Fortunately, registering your copyrights is much less fearful. Not only does the Copyright Office allow you to correct any technical errors, but errors that do occur need not be held against you. A recent case in the US District Court for Massachusetts has upheld the validity of a photographer’s copyright registration in spite of acknowledged errors.

The background. Photographer Joel Cipes took pictures of certain tableware products sold by Mikasa Inc. The resulting images were then licensed to Mikasa for certain specified uses, such as advertisements in bridal magazines. But Mikasa also used the images in non-licensed ways (on a web site) and refused to pay for the additional use, so Cipes filed suit for copyright infringement.

Cipes had registered his copyrights. Mikasa’s lawyers looked for errors in his application paperwork and, alas, found a few. Some of the published photos that were registered in a single group had actually been published in different years, and others were accidentally included in more than one group and thus got registered more than once. What’s more, claimed Mikasa, some of the photos that were registered as unpublished had actually been published — Mikasa had displayed them to the public in brochures and on its web site.

Cipes admitted the errors. Mikasa’s lawyers then asked the Court to declare that Cipes’ copyright registration was invalid, and therefore, to dismiss Cipes’ case entirely.

The decision. The Court shot Mikasa down, for two reasons. First, the Copyright Office has a regular procedure for correcting exactly the kind of errors that Mikasa found (wrong dates and duplicate registration), and Cipes had begun the correction process.

Second, said the Court, one of the reasons for having a copyright registration process is to identify the work so that the public can know it is copyrighted. Despite Cipes’ errors, “Mikasa was well aware” of Cipes rights.

Was it published? The Court also tossed out the claim that some photos had been published on Mikasa’s web site. The whole point of Cipes’ lawsuit was that Mikasa had not licensed the images, and “an unauthorized user lacks not only the right, but also the ability to ‘publish’ an author’s work and any attempt to do so is ineffective.”

Conclusion. Errors on the copyright registration form can be a problem, because your opponents will try to use them against you. But the courts will not deny your rights for minor technical errors — especially if you correct them as soon as you see them.

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