Supreme Court reverses $1B copyright lawsuit

By Andrew Rice
The Center Square

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision on Wednesday, ruled that an internet service provider is not liable for damages when its users unlawfully engage in copyright infringement.

The justices ruled in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, a case that focused on $1 billion in damages a jury sought from Cox Communications, after users of the internet service were found illegally downloading and uploading copyrighted material from Sony.

The justices said Cox, headquartered in Atlanta, could be liable for infringement of copyrighted material only if it intended to do so.

“The intent required for contributory liability can be shown only if the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

Sony, headquartered in Tokyo and with major offices in New York City and Culver, Calif., found 163,148 instances of illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted material from users of Cox’s internet services.

“Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights,” Thomas wrote.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson filed concurring opinions with the majority but warned against blanket pardons for companies that knowingly engage in second-hand copyright infringement.

“The majority, without any meaningful explanation, unnecessarily limits secondary liability even though this Court’s precedents have left open the possibility that other common-law theories of such liability, like aiding and abetting, could apply in the copyright context,” Sotomayor wrote.