Posts Tagged: "Rimini Street v. Oracle"

On Monday, March 4, Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued the decision for a unanimous Supreme Court in Rimini Street, Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc., which asked whether the meaning of “full costs” under 17 U.S.C. § 505 of the U.S. Copyright Act extends to damages outside of the six categories of costs that U.S. district courts can award against a losing party as outlined in 28 U.S.C. § 1821 and 28 U.S.C. § 1920. In siding with petitioner Rimini Street, the Supreme Court held that “full costs” in the copyright litigation context are limited to Sections 1821 and 1920, reversing the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decision to award $12.8 million to Oracle covering litigation expenses outside of the statutory schedule of costs.

On the morning of January 14th, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Rimini Street v. Oracle USA, a case that asks the nation’s highest court to decide whether the recovery of “full costs” in a copyright infringement suit as governed by 17 U.S.C. § 505 is limited to taxable costs under 28 U.S.C. § 1920 and 28 U.S.C. § 1821 or whether non-taxable costs can also be recovered. Much of the day’s discussion centered on the meaning of “full costs” and how that term had evolved under various revisions of U.S. copyright law, going back to the Copyright Act of 1831… Clement argued that Rimini Street’s interpretation of full costs renders both the word full completely superfluous and the first sentence of Section 505 without any meaning. “The better course [is] to say that ‘full’ means full, rather than nothing at all,” Clement argued.