Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U.S. 154 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving copyright law.

The case is part of a long series of controversies in US courts about the remedies available for authors who failed to register their copyrights before bringing suit.

[1] Reed Elsevier Inc. (et al.), the petitioners of this case, publish electronic content for other companies, such as The New York Times.

This resulted in the respondents initiating a class-action lawsuit against Elsevier for copyright infringement in the Southern District Court of New York.

In any case, however, where the deposit, application, and fee required for registration have been delivered to the Copyright Office in proper form and registration has been refused, the applicant is entitled to institute a civil action for infringement if notice thereof, with a copy of the complaint, is served on the Register of Copyrights.

The petitioners argued that the registration requirement of §411(a) is a mandatory prerequisite to initiating a lawsuit based on claim of infringement and is not a restriction on the federal court's jurisdiction.

[6] The petitioners cautioned the court that, if the Second Circuit's "drive-by" jurisdictional characterization of §411(a) were allowed to stand, it would block “the ability of parties to reach negotiated resolutions of their disputes involving unregistered works” and leave “the nation’s electronic databases and archives.

"[7] The Respondents presented similar arguments, expressing that §411(a) does not limit jurisdiction but rather functions as a 'claim-processing rule,' as a prerequisite to lawsuit that could either be enforced or waived by defendants.

They, similarly to Petitioners, argued that §411(a) does not limit a federal court's subject matter jurisdiction, but acts as a mandatory prerequisite to lawsuit that should be strictly enforced, when raised by a party.

[13] As both parties argued for the same outcome, the Supreme Court appointed Deborah Jones Merritt to serve as amicus curiae, supporting the second circuit's judgement.

Similarly to Professor Merritt, the CCIA cast the registration requirement as a necessary protection for Internet service providers, noting that, "[w]hen every blog and tweet might be protectable under copyright, the registration requirement dramatically reduces technology companies’ potential exposure to copyright infringement claims"[19] They argued that the Second Circuit's opinion was correctly decided[20] and that Petitioners' writ of certiorari should be dismissed on two grounds.

Justice Ginsburg agreed that Section 411(a)'s registration requirement does not restrict a federal court's subject matter jurisdiction.