UPDATE: O, Tenenbaum, O, Tenenbaum, the High Court Says It's Over

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)The United States Supreme Court today denied certiorari in Tenenbaum v. Sony BMG Music et al. (Docket No. 11-1019), leaving former Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum of Providence, Rhode Island, on the hook for a $675,000 copyright infringement jury award to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Justice Stephen Breyer and Chief Justice John Roberts did not participate in the ruling, according to the Associated Press. Harvard Law School Prof. Charles Nesson filed a petition for certiorari on February 13, 2012, seeking to overturn a jury verdict that awarded the RIAA $22,500 for each of 30 songs Tenenbaum unlawfully downloaded and shared from the now-defunct peer-to-peer network KaZaA in 2004.

The petitioner had asked the High Court to address whether the damages provision of the U.S. Copyright Act [17 U.S.C. sec. 504] "applied to noncommercial individuals without requirement of nexus with actual damages." U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts Judge Nancy Gertner reduced the damages award as excessive, but the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reinstated the jury verdict last year. (See "TUOL" posts 9/19/11, 7/9/10, 8/3/09 & 7/28/09.)

UPDATE: High Court Holds Foreign Works in Public Domain Still 'Copyrightable'

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeBy a 6-2 margin, with Justice Elena Kagan recusing herself, the U.S. Supreme Court this week ruled Congress has the authority to restore copyright protection to foreign works previously in the public domain without running afoul of the Constitution's Progress Clause (Art. 1, Sec. 8, Clause 8) [see "TUOL" post 3/8/11].

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion in Golan v. Holder (Case No. 10-545), finding that the  power conferred to Congress by the Constitution "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" was not undermined when the U.S. signed onto the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994 ("URAA") international treaty that accorded copyright protection to previously accessible foreign works by individuals ranging from author Virginia Woolf and film auteur Federico Fellini to composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

The case was originally brought by Lawrence Golan, a conductor who sought to produce a derivative composition based on works by Shostakovich in the public domain, who argued URAA stifled creativity. The government, in turn, contended that U.S. participation in an international copyright treaty served the nation's interests.

Justice Ginsburg wrote: "Nothing in the text of the Copyright Clause confines the 'Progress of Science' exclusively to 'incentives for creation.'" In a strong dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer lamented URAA "does not encourage anyone to produce a single new work [and] bestows monetary rewards only on owners of old works--works that already have been created and already are in the American public domain."