Vedder Price Shareholder Alain Villeneuve and Associate John Burke, both members of the firm’s Intellectual Property group, co-authored an article on May 2, 2014 for Law360 entitled “The Shadow of the Billion-Dollar Copyright Award.” 

The article describes the March 18 Circuit Court decision in the case Alaska Stock LLC v. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pub. Co., which affirmed the original ruling that a registration for a compilation covers any copyrightable component works that are also owned by the applicant, even if the registration applicant did not list the title and author of each component work, which affirms that a copyright owner can obtain a single copyright registration covering a large number of works.  Messrs. Villeneuve and Burke also highlight situations under which the ruling does not apply, as well as the potentially significant consequences for content users.