Opinion · Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
Sherman Nealy v. Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Sherman Nealy v. Warner Chappell Music, Inc., 60 F.4th 1325 (11th Cir. 2023)
- Type
- Opinion
- Court
- Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
- Jurisdiction
- Federal
- Date
- 2023-02-27
- Topic
- general
How later courts describe this case
- “[W]here the ‘gravamen’ of a copyright claim is ownership, the discovery rule dictates when a copyright plaintiff's claim accrues.”
- “The gravamen of a copyright claim is ownership if ownership of the copyright is the only disputed issue.”
- agreeing with the Ninth Circuit
Citator
UpLaw has not yet analyzed Sherman Nealy v. Warner Chappell Music, Inc.. The absence of a flag is not a finding that it is good law.
- Authority status
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- Cited by
- 14 opinions
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[PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 21-13232
____________________
SHERMAN NEALY,
an individual,
MUSIC SPECIALIST, INC.,
a Florida Corporation,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
versus
WARNER CHAPPELL MUSIC, INC.,
a Delaware Corporation,
ARTIST PUBLISHING GROUP, L.L.C.,
a Delaware Limited Liability, Corporation,
Defendants-Appellees.
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2 Opinion of the Court 21-13232
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 1:18-cv-25474-RAR
____________________
Before WILSON, JORDAN, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.
BRASHER, Circuit Judge:
This appeal requires us to answer a question of first impres-
sion about the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations that has di-
vided our sister circuits. The Copyright Act has a three-year statute
of limitations. 17 U.S.C. § 507
(b). Under our circuit’s discovery ac-
crual rule, claims about the ownership of a copyright are timely if
a plaintiff files suit within three years of when the plaintiff knew or
reasonably should have known that the defendant violated the
plaintiff’s ownership rights. Invoking that discovery rule, the plain-
tiffs in this case—Sherman Nealy and Music Specialist, Inc.—filed
this copyright action seeking, among other things, damages for in-
fringement they allege occurred more than three years before they
filed this lawsuit.
Despite our discovery rule, the defendants—Warner Chap-
pell Music, Inc. and Artist Publishing Group, LLC—contend that
the plaintiffs cannot recover damages for anything that happened
more than three years before they filed suit. See Sohm v. Scholastic,
Inc., 959 F.3d 39, 49-50
(2d Cir. 2020) (accepting this argument).
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21-13232 Opinion of the Court 3
That is, they do not dispute that a plaintiff can file suit over harm
that occurred more than three years earlier; they just say that the
plaintiff cannot recover any damages. This is so, they say, because
the Supreme Court’s decision in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer, 572 U.S. 663
(2014), bars retrospective relief for any in-
fringement occurring earlier than three years from the date of a
copyright lawsuit. In response, the plaintiffs contend that the de-
fendants’ argument is contrary to the text of the Copyright Act and
takes out of context Petrella’s statements about claims that were
timely because of a different accrual rule. See Starz Ent., LLC v.
MGM Domestic Television Distrib., LLC, 39 F.4th 1236, 1242-44
(9th Cir. 2022) (accepting this argument).
The district court certified the following question for inter-
locutory appellate review: whether damages in this copyright ac-
tion are limited to a three-year lookback period as calculated from
the date of the filing of the complaint. After briefing and with the
benefit of oral argument, we agree with the plaintiffs. We hold
that, when a copyright plaintiff has a timely claim under the dis-
covery accrual rule for infringement that occurred more than three
years before the lawsuit was filed, the plaintiff may recover dam-
ages for that infringement.
I.
This interlocutory appeal arises from Music Specialist, Inc.
and Sherman Nealy’s copyright infringement suit against Warner
Chappell Music, Inc.; Artist Publishing Group, LLC.; and Atlantic
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4 Opinion of the Court 21-13232
Recording Corporation. Because we must decide a pure question
of law in this interlocutory appeal, we provide the following back-
ground only as context for our decision. To be clear, “our descrip-
tion of the facts is not binding on the district court as the actual
facts will be established later at trial.” Mitsubishi Int’l Corp. v. Car-
dinal Textile Sales, 14 F.3d 1507
, 1511 n.2 (11th Cir. 1994).
At its core, MSI and Nealy’s suit alleges that Warner, Artist,
and Atlantic are infringing their copyrights to certain musical
works because the defendants are using the works based on invalid
licenses to the copyrights that they obtained from third parties. The
licenses are invalid, MSI and Nealy say, because MSI and Nealy, not
the third-party licensors, are the owners of the copyrights.
The story of MSI and Nealy’s alleged copyright ownership
begins in the 1980s. In 1983, MSI was incorporated under Florida
law with Tony Butler listed as president in the articles of incorpo-
ration. Later amendments to the articles of incorporation listed
Nealy as MSI’s president and Butler as its vice president. MSI was
Nealy’s first venture in the music industry. He provided the fund-
ing for MSI’s operation, and Butler was a disc jockey who had more
knowledge than Nealy about the music industry. Butler authored
or co-authored all the musical works at issue in this case.
From 1983 to 1986, MSI recorded and released one album
and several singles on vinyl and cassette. Those singles include all
the works involved in this case, each of which is registered with the
United States Copyright Office. Then, in 1986, MSI dissolved as a
corporation and remained an inactive corporation until its
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21-13232 Opinion of the Court 5
reinstatement in 2017 with Nealy as owner, president, and share-
holder. Although it dissolved in 1986, MSI’s business did not cease
until 1989 when Nealy began serving a prison sentence following a
conviction for distributing cocaine. Nealy was released in 2008.
While Nealy was in prison, Butler formed another company
named 321 Music, LLC and began licensing the rights to musical
works from the MSI catalog. In February 2008, Atlantic obtained a
license from Butler and 321 to interpolate “Jam the Box,” one of
the works at issue in this case, into the artist Flo Rida’s hit song “In
the Ayer.” Then, in July of that same year, Artist and Warner en-
tered into an agreement with Butler and 321 that purportedly made
Artist and Warner the exclusive administrators of the music pub-
lishing rights to all the musical works at issue in this case. Nealy did
not authorize anyone to exploit the rights to the MSI catalog while
he was in prison. And Nealy did not continue his involvement in
the music industry or with MSI while in prison.
After Nealy left prison, he learned that another third party,
Robert Crane, was distributing works from the MSI catalog. MSI
and Nealy’s legal consultant Jonathan Black met briefly with Crane
and his lawyers in June 2008 to discuss Crane’s use of the MSI cat-
alog. But nothing came of that meeting. Nealy recalled “letting
them know that [he] was home [from prison] and that they had
[his] music.” But he also “didn’t know what to do.” And so, he took
no further action before returning to prison in 2012 to serve an-
other sentence, which he completed in the fall of 2015.
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6 Opinion of the Court 21-13232
Before Nealy returned to prison, litigation over the rights to
the works ensued between Crane’s companies, Atlantic, Artist,
Warner, Butler, and 321. But Nealy was not a party to this litigation
and contends he did not learn of it until after serving his second
prison sentence. Once he returned to prison, Nealy again did not
have any involvement in the music industry.
Nealy alleges that he did not know and should not have rea-
sonably known about the defendants’ violations of his ownership
rights until sometime around the beginning of 2016. After Nealy
finished serving his second sentence, a former MSI associate told
Nealy about the litigation and Butler’s purported transfers of the
rights to the musical works in January 2016. And then nearly three
years later, on December 28, 2018, MSI and Nealy finally filed this
lawsuit.
MSI and Nealy alleged that Atlantic, Artist, and Warner in-
fringed their copyrights to several music works in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501
. MSI and Nealy sought relief for infringement they al-
leged occurred as early as 2008—ten years before they filed this
lawsuit. The parties entered a joint-pretrial stipulation in which
they agreed “that this case presents an ‘ownership dispute’ within
the meaning of the statute of limitations for copyright claims.” Af-
ter discovery, the defendants moved for summary judgment on all
claims, which the district court granted in part and denied in part.
One issue the district court addressed at summary judgment
was the timeliness of MSI and Nealy’s claims. A three-year statute
of limitations governs claims under the Copyright Act, which runs
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21-13232 Opinion of the Court 7
from the time the claim accrues. 17 U.S.C. § 507
(b). Because the
parties agreed that the only disputed substantive issue relating to
MSI and Nealy’s claims was whether MSI and Nealy owned the
copyrights, the district court ruled that their claims accrued “when
[MSI and Nealy] knew or should have known that [the defendants]
were challenging their ownership to the [works].” Determining
that a genuine dispute of material fact existed about when accrual
occurred, the district court denied summary judgment for the de-
fendants on statute of limitations grounds.
In a separate order, the district court certified for interlocu-
tory appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292
(b) the question whether “dam-
ages in this copyright action are limited to the three-year lookback
period as calculated from the date of the filing of the Complaint
pursuant to the Copyright Act and Petrella.” MSI and Nealy timely
filed a petition to appeal from the certified order, which we
granted, resulting in this interlocutory appeal.
Nealy and MSI also attempted to appeal from the district
court’s partial final judgment in favor of Atlantic, but we dismissed
that appeal for lack of jurisdiction. We also exercised our discretion
under Section 1292(b) to limit the issues in this appeal to the district
court’s certified question. It is to that question that we now turn.
II.
We review legal questions, including the interpretation of
federal statutes such as the Copyright Act and its statute of
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8 Opinion of the Court 21-13232
limitations, de novo. See Stansell v. Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colom., 704 F.3d 910, 914
(11th Cir. 2013).
III.
The Copyright Act’s statute of limitations provides that
“[n]o civil action shall be maintained . . . unless it is commenced
within three years after the claim accrued.” 17 U.S.C. § 507
(b). Un-
der our precedent, where the “gravamen” of a copyright claim is
ownership, the discovery rule dictates when a copyright plaintiff’s
claim accrues. Webster v. Dean Guitars, 955 F.3d 1270, 1276
(11th
Cir. 2020). Under the discovery rule, a copyright ownership claim
accrues, and therefore the limitations period starts, “when the
plaintiff learns, or should as a reasonable person have learned, that
the defendant was violating his ownership rights.” Id.
The question in this appeal is whether the Copyright Act’s
statute of limitations, 17 U.S.C. § 507
(b), precludes a copyright
plaintiff from recovering damages for harms occurring more than
three years before the plaintiff filed suit, even if the plaintiff’s suit is
timely under our discovery rule. Our discussion proceeds in two
parts. First, we briefly confirm that the discovery rule governs the
timeliness of MSI and Nealy’s claims. Second, assuming MSI and
Nealy’s claims are timely, we evaluate the Copyright Act and the
Supreme Court’s decision in Petrella to determine whether the
plaintiffs may recover damages for infringement that occurred
more than three years before they filed this lawsuit.
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A.
We start with the timeliness of the plaintiffs’ claims. The
copyright statute of limitations runs from the day that a claim “ac-
crues.” And there are two recognized rules for determining that
date: the discovery rule and the injury rule. Under the discovery
rule, a claim “accrues when the plaintiff learns, or should as a rea-
sonable person have learned, that the defendant was violating his”
rights. Webster, 955 F.3d at 1276
. These kinds of claims can only
accrue one time. Id.
Conversely, under the injury rule, a copyright
plaintiff’s claim accrues when the harm, that is, the infringement,
occurs, no matter when the plaintiff learns of it. Petrella, 572 U.S. at 670
. But, attendant to the injury rule is the separate-accrual rule,
which means that a new copyright claim accrues with each discrete
infringement. Id. at 671-72
.
Under our precedent, where the “gravamen” of a copyright
claim is ownership, a plaintiff’s claim accrues when he knew or
should have known about the infringement. Webster, 955 F.3d at 1276
. The gravamen of a copyright claim is ownership if ownership
of the copyright is the only disputed issue. Id.
For example, in Web-
ster, the defendant conceded that it used a copyright without the
plaintiff’s permission. Id.
But the defendant argued that it had a li-
cense from a third party who owned the copyright instead of the
plaintiff. Id.
Accordingly, the plaintiff’s claim was an ownership
claim because the only disputed issue was whether the plaintiff or
the third party owned the copyright. Id.
And so, the discovery rule
governed the timeliness of the plaintiff’s claim. Id.
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10 Opinion of the Court 21-13232
We have little difficulty concluding that the discovery rule
governs the timeliness of MSI and Nealy’s claims in this case. The
parties entered a joint-pretrial stipulation in which they agreed
“that this case presents an ‘ownership dispute’ within the meaning
of the statute of limitations for copyright claims.” And the dispute
in this case is materially indistinguishable from Webster for this
purpose. The defendants concede that if MSI and Nealy prove that
they own the copyrights to the works, the only remaining issue in
the case would be damages because the defendants’ use of the
works would have infringed MSI and Nealy’s copyrights. The de-
fendants also contend, like the Webster defendant, that they are
not liable because a third party owns the copyrights and licensed
them to the defendants. Accordingly, Webster controls, and the
discovery rule governs the timeliness of MSI and Nealy’s claims.
The district court applied the discovery rule and concluded
that there was a genuine issue of fact about when the plaintiffs
knew or should have known about their claims. We will assume
for the purposes of answering the district court’s certified question
that the district court’s summary judgment ruling on this point was
correct. And so, assuming the plaintiffs’ claims are timely under the
discovery rule, we turn to the question whether the plaintiffs may
recover retrospective relief for infringement that occurred more
than three years before they filed this lawsuit.
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B.
The defendants rely on the Supreme Court’s decision in Pet-
rella to support their contention that MSI and Nealy may not re-
cover for infringement that occurred more than three years before
they filed this suit. In Petrella, the Supreme Court held that the eq-
uitable doctrine of laches does not bar copyright claims that are
timely within the three-year limitations period because Section
507(b) “itself takes account of delay.” Petrella, 572 U.S. at 670-72, 677
. The Court identified several reasons that it was unnecessary
to apply the doctrine of laches to copyright claims. One of those
reasons, the Court said, was that “Section 507(b) . . . bars relief of
any kind for conduct occurring prior to the three-year limitations
period.” Id. at 667
. The Court explained that, by dint of the statute
of limitations, retrospective relief is available to a copyright plaintiff
“running only three years back from the date the complaint was
filed.” Id. at 672
.
The circuits are split on the meaning of Petrella. The Second
Circuit has held that, even under the discovery rule, a copyright
plaintiff may not recover for infringement occurring more than
three years before the plaintiff filed suit. Sohm, 959 F.3d at 49-50
.
The Second Circuit recognized that its ruling undermines the dis-
covery rule: a copyright plaintiff could have a timely claim under
the discovery rule but no available relief. But it felt itself bound by
the Court’s statements in Petrella. More recently, the Ninth Circuit
split with the Second Circuit and held that Petrella does not mean
that a plaintiff cannot recover for infringement that occurred more
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12 Opinion of the Court 21-13232
than three years before the filing of an otherwise timely suit under
the discovery rule. Starz Ent., 39 F.4th at 1242-44
. The court rea-
soned that an absolute three-year bar on damages “would eviscer-
ate the discovery rule.” Id. at 1244
. And the court explained that
reading Petrella to impose such a rule would mean that the Petrella
Court ignored the plain text of Section 507(b), which “limits civil
actions to ‘three years after the claim accrued’” and says nothing
about remedies. Id.
at 1245 (quoting17 U.S.C. § 507
(b)).
We agree with the Ninth Circuit and hold that a copyright
plaintiff may recover retrospective relief for infringement occur-
ring more than three years before the lawsuit’s filing so long as the
plaintiff’s claim is timely under the discovery rule. This is so for
two reasons, which we discuss in turn. First, we believe Petrella’s
statements about the availability of relief are directed to the way
the statute of limitations works when claims accrue under the in-
jury rule, not the discovery rule. Second, the text of the Copyright
Act does not place a time limit on remedies for an otherwise timely
claim.
1.
The defendants’ argument begins and ends with Petrella.
Specifically, the defendants invoke the following quotes. The Su-
preme Court said that “Section 507(b) . . . bars relief of any kind for
conduct occurring prior to the three-year limitations period.” 572 U.S. at 667
. And the Court said that the import of the statute of
limitations is that a copyright plaintiff can get damages “running
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21-13232 Opinion of the Court 13
only three years back from the date the complaint was filed.” Id. at 672
. Because the statute of limitations already protects defendants
from stale claims, the Court held that it was unnecessary to apply
the equitable doctrine of laches.
We do not read these snippets from Petrella to create a
three-year lookback period or a damages cap. We cannot read a
court’s opinion like we would read words in a statute. CBS, Inc. v.
FCC, 453 U.S. 367, 385
(1981) (quoting Reiter v. Sonotone Corp.,
442 U.S. 330
, 341 (1979)); United States v. Garges,46 F.4th 682, 685
(8th Cir. 2022); Romo v. Largen,723 F.3d 670, 678
(6th Cir. 2013)
(Sutton, J., concurring). Instead, when interpreting and applying
words in a judicial opinion, we must consider the context, such as
the question the court was answering, the parties’ arguments, and
facts of the case. See Reiter, 442 U.S. at 341 (examining the lan-
guage of a judicial opinion “in context”). Reading these statements
in context, we are confident that the Court did not cap copyright
damages for claims that are timely under the discovery rule.
For starters, Petrella did not present the question whether a
plaintiff could recover for harm that occurred more than three
years before the plaintiff filed suit if his claim was otherwise timely
under the discovery rule. The question in Petrella was “whether
the equitable defense of laches (unreasonable, prejudicial delay in
commencing suit) may bar relief on a copyright infringement claim
brought within § 507(b)’s three-year limitations period.” Petrella,
572 U.S. at 667
. The plaintiff in Petrella “sought no relief for con-
duct occurring outside § 507(b)’s three-year limitations period.”
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14 Opinion of the Court 21-13232
572 U.S. at 668
. But the defendant nevertheless argued that laches
barred the plaintiff’s claim because it was unreasonable and preju-
dicial to the defendant to allow the plaintiff to sue eighteen years
after the defendant allegedly began infringing the plaintiff’s copy-
right. Id. at 674-75
. The Court rejected the defendant’s argument
and held that laches could not bar a copyright claim that was oth-
erwise timely under the statute of limitations. Id. at 667
.
In passing on the question presented, the Court reasoned
that the defense of laches was unnecessary because the statute of
limitations already protects putative defendants from stale claims.
But the Court made its statements in the context of a claim that
was timely because of the injury rule. And, as we have already ex-
plained, the plaintiffs’ claims in this case are timely because of the
discovery rule, not the injury rule. This distinction is important for
two reasons.
First, the Court’s statements in Petrella merely describe the
operation of the injury rule on the facts of that case and others like
it. The Court in Petrella explained that, under the injury rule, sep-
arate claims accrue with each new injury. Id. at 670-72
. The injury
rule and separate-accrual rule mean, as the Court said, that a sepa-
rate copyright claim accrues “[e]ach time an infringing work is re-
produced or distributed.” Id. at 671
. Because the claim accrues “at
the time the wrong occurs,” the statute of limitations protects pu-
tative defendants from stale claims by giving a copyright owner
only three years from that date to sue for the infringement. Id.; see
17 U.S.C. § 507
(b). But after those three years pass, the owner no
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21-13232 Opinion of the Court 15
longer has a timely claim to sue for that act of infringement under
the injury rule. That’s the way the injury accrual rule works—it
precludes a plaintiff’s recovery for any harms that occur earlier
than three years before the plaintiff files suit.
The discovery rule affords defendants a different kind of pro-
tection from stale claims. Under the discovery rule, it is possible to
have a timely claim for an infringement that occurred more than
three years before the lawsuit was filed. On the other hand, it also
means that a claim accrues only one time: “when a copyright own-
ership claim is time-barred, ‘all those claims logically following
therefrom should be barred, including infringement claims.’” Web-
ster, 955 F.3d at 1277
(quoting Calhoun v. Lillenas Publ’g,298 F.3d 1228, 1236
(11th Cir. 2002) (Birch, J., concurring)). Had the discov-
ery rule applied in Petrella, the plaintiff’s claims—based on infring-
ing conduct that began almost two decades earlier—may well have
been untimely.
In any event, the Court’s explanation of how the injury rule
protects defendants from stale claims says nothing about damages
when a claim is timely under the discovery rule. If the Court in
Petrella had been addressing a claim that was timely under the dis-
covery rule, it would have said different things about how that
claim accrued and the way the statute of limitations affected the
availability of damages. For example, it would have explained that
the statute of limitations protects defendants from stale claims be-
cause all claims for damages are cut off three years from when the
putative plaintiff discovers his claim. But the Court’s bottom line
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16 Opinion of the Court 21-13232
about laches would have been the same: “in face of a statute of lim-
itations enacted by Congress, laches cannot be invoked to bar legal
relief.” Petrella, 572 U.S. at 679
.
Second, the Court in Petrella expressly addressed the discov-
ery rule and preserved the question whether the discovery rule
governs the accrual of copyright claims. The Court recognized that
nine of our sister circuits apply the discovery rule to the kind of
ordinary infringement claims that were at issue in Petrella. See id.
at 670 n.4. The Court noted that it “[has] not passed on the ques-
tion” of the discovery rule’s propriety and reserved that question
for a future case. Id.
It would be inconsistent with Petrella’s preservation of the
discovery rule to read Petrella to bar damages for claims that are
timely under the discovery rule. See Petrella, 572 U.S. at 670
n.4.
As the Ninth Circuit explained, “[t]here is no reason for a discovery
rule if damages for infringing acts of which the copyright owner
reasonably becomes aware years later are unavailable.” Starz Ent.,
39 F.4th at 1244
. Unless a plaintiff may recover damages for the
infringement, the discovery and injury rules lead to the same re-
sult—retrospective relief only for harms occurring in the three
years preceding the filing of the lawsuit. Because the Supreme
Court expressly reserved the question of the discovery rule’s pro-
priety, we cannot say it silently eliminated the discovery rule by
capping damages for claims that are timely under that rule.
In response to this concern, the defendants argue that their
reading of Petrella would allow a copyright plaintiff with a timely
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21-13232 Opinion of the Court 17
claim under the discovery rule to sue for injunctive relief, even if
retrospective relief is unavailable. See 17 U.S.C. § 502
. But the de-
fendants have no explanation for why the statute of limitations
would bar damages, but not other kinds of relief. Moreover, if a
plaintiff did not suffer damages in the three years preceding the
lawsuit, there is likely no basis for a plaintiff to obtain injunctive
relief. The harm is not ongoing and is unlikely to resume if it ceased
long ago. And, although a copyright plaintiff may elect to recover
statutory damages instead of actual damages and profits, id.
§
504(c), those statutory damages would also be unavailable under
the defendants’ reading of Petrella because they remedy harm re-
sulting from past violations of the Copyright Act and are therefore
retrospective relief. See Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 668
(1974)
(explaining retrospective relief includes monetary compensation
for “a past breach of a legal duty”). There is no escaping the con-
clusion that the defendants’ position would gut the discovery rule
by eliminating any meaningful relief for timely claims, even though
the Court expressly left open whether a discovery rule applies to
copyright claims.
In short, the defendants’ reading of Petrella ignores the ques-
tion presented, conflates the Court’s discussion of claim accrual un-
der the injury rule with the availability of damages under the dis-
covery rule, and cannot be squared with the Court’s express preser-
vation of the discovery rule. For these reasons, we believe the Su-
preme Court in Petrella did not bar copyright damages in actions
that are timely under the discovery rule.
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18 Opinion of the Court 21-13232
2.
Having established that Petrella itself does not impose a sep-
arate bar on retrospective relief for an otherwise timely copyright
claim, we turn to the Copyright Act’s text to see if it supports such
a bar. We conclude it does not.
The plain text of the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations
does not limit the remedies available on an otherwise timely claim.
The statute of limitations provides that “[n]o civil action shall be
maintained under the provisions of this title unless it is commenced
within three years after the claim accrued.” 17 U.S.C. § 507
(b). A
civil action is a proceeding “brought to enforce, redress, or protect
a private right or civil right.” Action, Black’s Law Dictionary (11th
ed. 2019). A remedy, on the other hand, is “[t]he means of enforc-
ing a right or preventing or redressing a wrong.” Remedy, Black’s
Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019). A plaintiff cannot obtain a remedy
without a timely civil action. But, if a plaintiff succeeds at maintain-
ing a timely civil action, the inapplicable time-bar has little bearing
on what a plaintiff may obtain as a remedy.
The Copyright Act’s damages provisions do not place a
three-year limitation on the recovery of damages for past infringe-
ment. For a separate damages bar to exist, these damages provi-
sions would have to limit a plaintiff’s recovery to something less
than the harm caused by the infringement for which a defendant is
liable. But they do not. Instead, the Copyright Act makes “an in-
fringer of a copyright” liable for “the copyright owner’s actual
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21-13232 Opinion of the Court 19
damages and any additional profits of the infringer.” 17 U.S.C. § 504
(a)(1). “Actual damages” are defined as “the actual damages suf-
fered by [the plaintiff] as a result of the infringement.” Id.
§ 504(b).
There is no bar to damages in a timely action.
Given that the plain text of the Copyright Act does not sup-
port the existence of a separate damages bar for an otherwise
timely copyright claim, we hold that a copyright plaintiff with a
timely claim under the discovery rule may recover retrospective
relief for infringement that occurred more than three years prior to
the filing of the lawsuit.
IV.
The district court certified the question of whether “dam-
ages in this copyright action are limited to the three-year lookback
period as calculated from the date of the filing of the Complaint
pursuant to the Copyright Act and Petrella.” We answer that ques-
tion in the negative and conclude that where a copyright plaintiff
has a timely claim for infringement occurring more than three
years before the filing of the lawsuit, the plaintiff may obtain retro-
spective relief for that infringement.
Accordingly, the certified question is ANSWERED.