Fraud on the Copyright Office. (The Law of the Line).(Brief Article)(Column)

Hawaii Business, March, 2002 by Godbey, Bob; Griffiths, Jackson Godbey

Fraud on the Copyright Office can invalidate a copyright registration. As you may recall, copyright registration is not a prerequisite to ownership of a copyright; copyright springs into existence automatically when a work of authorship is fixed in a tangible medium. But copyright registration is required to bring an infringement suit, and fraud on the Copyright Office will defeat registration and thus destroy the jurisdictional basis for a copyright infringement case.

Fraud requires a specific intent to deceive or cheat, but that can be shown by circumstantial evidence. So, fraud on the Copyright Office generally arises in the context of a mistake in a copyright registration that the defendant, the accused infringer, will try to argue was deliberate. If the...

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