Victims of Copyright Infringement Have More Time to File Their Claim

In William A. Graham Company v. Haughey, No. 08-2007 (June 5, 2009), agreeing with eight other federal courts of appeals, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the “discovery rule,” not the “injury rule,” governs the 3-year statute of limitations for civil cases, 17 U.S.C. Sec. 507(b), for the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. Secs. 101-810). That is, the statute of limitations begins to run, not on the date of the alleged infringement, but on the date the infringement was discovered or should have been discovered with reasonable diligence. The Third Circuit noted that the federal discovery rule is always applied absent a contrary directive from Congress. The Third Circuit holding affirmed the interpretation of 17 U.S.C. Sec. 507(b) by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, but reversed the district court’s application of the discovery rule to the particular facts of the case. The Third Circuit remanded the case to the district court for consideration of alternate arguments the district court had declined to address in its decision.