Supreme Court to Hear Electronic Database Appeal

Those of you who have followed the trials and tribulations of the electronic database class action filed years ago by ASJA, the Authors Guild, and NWU may remember that the last news was that settlement objectors had been successful and a court had tossed the agreement as it stood. Each side had its points, and I'm not going to rehash them here (other than to note that my reluctance about the objection was not on principle but on pragmatism and what I feared it might effectively do). Now the Supreme Court is hearing an appeal on whether unregistered works can be part of the agreement.

It's pretty rare for the Court to take up any issue, but figure that their interest is not in freelance writers or publishers so much as clarifying issues of copyright or of class actions. The issue is whether those with unregistered works can sue, because under U.S. copyright law, you must have registered a work (even if after an infringement) to bring a legal action. At the same time, a contract is actually a form of private law. Because the lead plaintiffs had registered copyright, their suit was legal. So do the non-registered, who technically may not have had the right to sue, get bumped? Does the whole settlement go out the window? Or is a settlement agreed to by both parties acceptable? It certainly will be interesting to watch - I'm ready to sit down for oral arguments with a bowl of popcorn.