In a recent showdown between fashion designer Unicolors, Inc. and clothing retailer H&M, the Ninth Circuit reversed a finding that H&M infringed one of Unicolors’ fabric designs, addressing three important tenets of copyright registration in the process. First, to invalidate a copyright registration, there is no requirement that the registrant had an intent to defraud the Copyright Office. Second, when seeking a “single-unit registration” of multiple works, those works must be published as a singular, bundled unit. And third, when seeking to invalidate a registration for known inaccuracies contained in a copyright registration, the Copyright Office, not a court, must first consider whether those inaccuracies, had they been known at the time of registration, would have caused the Copyright Office to refuse registration.
