Appeal from the United States District Courtfor the District of ArizonaWarren K. Urbom, Senior District Judge, PresidingArgued and SubmittedJanuary 14, 1997--San Francisco, CaliforniaFiled June 10, 1997Before: Donald P. Lay,* Alfred T. Goodwin, andMary M. Schroeder, Circuit Judges.Opinion by Judge Schroeder
______________________COUNSEL Gordon Dean Booth, Jr., Booth, Owens & Jospin, Atlanta,Georgia, and Robert S. Venning, Heller, Ehrman, White &McAuliffe, San Francisco, California, for the plaintiff-appellant.Joseph D. Lewis, Cleary & Komen, Washington, D.C., for thedefendant-appellee.
_____________________________OPINION SCHROEDER, Circuit Judge:This is a copyright dispute between parties who believe thecopyrighted work, the Urantia Book, was authored by celes-tial beings and transcribed, compiled and collected by meremortals. In this litigation, the plaintiff-appellant Urantia Foun-dation claims that the defendant-appellee Kristen Maaherrainfringed the Foundation's copyright when she distributed acomputerized version of the Book on disk. Maaherra con-cedes copying, so the only issue before us is whether theFoundation owns a valid copyright in the Book.The district court granted summary judgment to Maaherraon the ground that the Foundation's renewal copyright wasinvalid. Urantia Foundation v. Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1347(D. Ariz. 1995).1 The court determined that the Foundationwas not a proper renewal claimant because the Book was nota "work made for hire," as claimed on the renewal certificate,and that even though the Book could have qualified as a"composite work," the Foundation had failed to show that itwas its "proprietor." See 17 U.S.C.S 304(a) (providing thatproprietors of composite works and works made for hire canclaim renewal). We conclude that the Foundation has estab-lished that it was, at the time of renewal, the proprietor of acomposite work, and that the mistaken description on therenewal certificate does not affect the validity of the renewal.We therefore reverse the district court's grant of summaryjudgment in favor of Maaherra.BACKGROUNDCentral to an understanding of the case is the history, asperceived by both parties, of the creation of the Book. Bothparties believe that the words in the Book were "authored" bynon-human spiritual beings described in terms such as theDivine Counselor, the Chief of the Corps of SuperuniversePersonalities, and the Chief of the Archangels of Nebadon.These spiritual entities are thought to have delivered theteachings, that were eventually assembled in the Book,"through" a patient of a Chicago psychiatrist, Dr. Sadler.The parties also agree that to understand these divine mes-sages better and to share them with the rest of the world, Dr.Sadler formed a group of five or six followers, called the Con-tact Commission. At first, the members of the Contact Com-mission started discussing the divine teachings amongthemselves. Then, apparently in response to what they per-ceived to be prompting from the spiritual beings, and in col-laboration with a larger group of followers called the Forum,the Contact Commission began to pose specific questions tothe spiritual beings. The answers to these questions, as trans-mitted to the humans and arranged by them, became the Uran-tia Papers. At some point, the manuscript containing thePapers was intentionally destroyed after the creation of about2,000 printing plates.Members of the Contact Commission, including foundingmember Dr. Sadler, then formed the Urantia Foundation, anIllinois charitable trust, for one purpose: to preserve and dis-seminate the teachings contained in the Papers. It appears thatthe Foundation was, at least initially, headquartered at Dr.Sadler's home. The Contact Commission transferred the print-ing plates to the Foundation through the trust instrument.The transfer is detailed in a district court opinion, arisingin another circuit, and also involving the validity of the Foun-dation's copyright in the Book, but analyzing the validity ofthe original, rather than the renewal copyright. Urantia Foun-dation v. Burton, 210 U.S.P.Q. 217 (W.D. Mich. 1980). TheBurton court found that the trust instrument described theFoundation's primary estate as consisting of the printingplates on which the Papers were inscribed. The instrumentalso provided that the trustees were specifically empowered,and had the duty, "to retain absolute and unconditional controlof all plates and other media for the printing and reproductionof the Urantia Book and any translation thereof. . .." Id. at219 (citing to Paragraph 3.3 of the trust instrument).The Foundation published the Book in 1955. The originalcopyright certificate was issued to the Foundation in 1956.The Foundation renewed the copyright in 1983.In 1990, Maaherra, who resides in Arizona, and whodescribes herself as "an avid reader of the [Book] since1969," prepared a study aid that included the entire text of theBook and started distributing it free of charge to various indi-viduals. That same year, the Foundation learned that someonewas distributing the Book on computer disks, using the Foun-dation's trademarks. Upon discovering that Maaherra wasresponsible for this, the Foundation filed the instant suit in1991. See Urantia Foundation v. Maaherra, 895 F. Supp.1338 (D. Ariz. 1995) (recounting this chronology).This appeal is from the district court's October 25, 1995amended final judgment based on its February 10, 1995 ordergranting summary judgment to Maaherra on the Foundation'scopyright infringement claim. See Urantia, 895 F. Supp.1347.DISCUSSIONCopyrightability of the BookA threshold issue in this case is whether the work, becauseit is claimed to embody the words of celestial beings ratherthan human beings, is copyrightable at all. "To qualify forcopyright protection, a work must be original to the author."Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company,Inc.,
499 U.S. 340, 345
(1991)(citation omitted). The corestatute, 17 U.S.C. S 102(a), provides: [c]opyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, . . . from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.17 U.S.C. S 102(a). "Original, as the term is used in copy-right, means only that the work was independently created bythe author (as opposed to copied from other works), and thatit possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity." Feist,
499 U.S. at 345
(citation omitted).[1] Maaherra claims that there can be no valid copyright inthe Book because it lacks the requisite ingredient of humancreativity, and that therefore the Book is not a "work ofauthorship" within the meaning of the Copyright Act. Thecopyright laws, of course, do not expressly require "human"authorship, and considerable controversy has arisen in recentyears over the copyrightability of computer-generated works.See Arthur R. Miller, Copyright Protection for Computer Pro-grams, Databases, and Computer-Generated Works: Is Any-thing New Since CONTU?, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 977 (1993). Weagree with Maaherra, however, that it is not creations ofdivine beings that the copyright laws were intended to protect,and that in this case some element of human creativity musthave occurred in order for the Book to be copyrightable. Atthe very least, for a worldly entity to be guilty of infringinga copyright, that entity must have copied something createdby another worldly entity.The district court held that the Book was copyrightable.However, if the court erred in this regard, we need not reachthe other issues in the case.[2] The copyrightability issue is not a metaphysical onerequiring the courts to determine whether or not the Book hadcelestial origins. In this case, the belief both parties may haveregarding those origins, and their claim that the Book is aproduct of divine revelation, is a matter of faith, and obvi-ously a crucial element in the promotion and dissemination ofthe Book. For copyright purposes, however, a work is copy-rightable if copyrightability is claimed by the first humanbeings who compiled, selected, coordinated, and arranged theUrantia teachings, "in such a way that the resulting work asa whole constitutes an original work of authorship. " 17 U.S.C.S 101 (defining a "compilation"). See also 17 U.S.C. S 103(providing that compilations are copyrightable). Those whowere responsible for the creation of the tangible literary formthat could be read by others, could have claimed copyright forthemselves as "authors," because they were responsible forthe revelations appearing " `in such a way' as to render thework as a whole original." Feist,
499 U.S. at 358
(referringto the statutory definition of compilation).The Supreme Court in Feist, supra, held that the whitepages of the plaintiff's telephone directory did not qualify forcopyright protection, because there was nothing original aboutlisting names of the area's telephone subscribers in alphabeti-cal order. Yet Feist also recognized that a compilation of factsmay possess the requisite originality when the author chooseswhich facts to include, in what order to place them, and howto arrange the data so that readers may use them effectively.Feist simply reaffirmed what the statute provides and whathad been known since The Trademark Cases,
100 U.S. 82
(1879) and Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111U.S. 53 (1884): that copyright protection only extends tothose components of the work that are "original " to the"author", and not to the facts themselves. Feist, 499 U.S. at346-47, 350-51.[3] In this case, the Contact Commission may havereceived some guidance from celestial beings when the Com-mission posed the questions, but the members of the ContactCommission chose and formulated the specific questionsasked. These questions materially contributed to the structureof the Papers, to the arrangement of the revelations in eachPaper, and to the organization and order in which the Papersfollowed one another. We hold that the human selection andarrangement of the revelations in this case could not havebeen so "mechanical or routine as to require no creativitywhatsoever." Feist, 499 at 362. We conclude, therefore, thatthe "extremely low" threshold level of creativity required forcopyright protection has been met in this case. See Feist, 499U.S. at 345. ("The vast majority of works make the gradequite easily, as they possess some creative spark,`no matterhow crude, humble, or obvious' it might be.") (quotationomitted).[4] It must be remembered that the claim of copyrightinfringement in this case concerns the verbatim copying of theentire Urantia Book, including the selection and arrangementof the revelations into the Papers that comprise the Book. Thiscase does not concern the use of a single "revelation" outsidethe context of the Book, which for purposes of this casewould be analogous to a "fact," and which of course wouldnot be copyrightable. See Feist,
499 U.S. at 347
.This principle, the distinction between revelations as factsand the expression of these revelations, was recognized in a1941 copyright infringement case that involved similar claimsof divine authorship. Oliver v. Saint Germain Foundation, 41F. Supp. 296 (S.D. Cal. 1941). In Oliver, as here, the plain-tiff's religious text proclaimed that the facts contained in thetext had come straight from a spirit, and that the spirit was theauthor of the history in the text. Id. at 297. In that case, how-ever, the plaintiff (unsuccessfully) claimed copyright protec-tion in the divine revelations themselves, and in the methodsof spiritual communication, rather than in the plaintiff's spe-cific selection or arrangement of these divine revelations. Thedefendant in Oliver had not copied that arrangement andselection, but simply had written another text using the samedivine "facts." Id. at 299. The court in Oliver made it clearthat, had the claim been that the selection and arrangement ofthe divine revelations had been infringed, the plaintiff's copy-right infringement claim might have had merit. Id. [5] Thus, notwithstanding the Urantia Book's claimed non-human origin, the Papers in the form in which they were orig-inally organized and compiled by the members of the ContactCommission were at least partially the product of human cre-ativity. The Papers thus did not belong to that "narrow cate-gory of works in which the creative spark is utterly lacking orso trivial as to be virtually nonexistent." Feist, 499 U.S. at359 (citation omitted). Therefore, the Papers were works ame-nable to common law copyright protection, and the districtcourt correctly so held.Ownership of the Copyright at theTime of Original PublicationThe district court held that even though a common lawcopyright was created at the time the Papers came into being,the Foundation itself had not adequately shown that it ownedthat copyright in 1955, when it published the Book, so as toentitle it to claim the statutory copyright. Urantia, 895 F.Supp. at 1350-51, 1354. Because the district court was of theopinion that the Foundation had come into possession of theplates "serendipitously," the court found that the Foundationhad failed to establish how it had become the "proprietor" ofthe copyright in the Papers. Id. at 1354.The district court accurately observed that the selection ofDr. Sadler's patient as the amanuensis for communicating theteachings eventually transcribed on the plates was indeed ser-endipitous. We believe the controlling issue, however, iswhether, as of the time of publication, the Foundation, thecopyright claimant, could trace its title back to the humanswho owned the original common law copyright. We hold thatit could.[6] Under the 1909 Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. SS 1, et. seq.(superseded in 1978), an unpublished work was protected bycommon law copyright from the moment it was created, untilit was either published with proper notice, or otherwisereceived protection under federal copyright law. See TwinBooks Corp. v. Walt Disney Co., 83 F.3d 1162, 1165 (9th Cir.1996). The Papers were therefore protected by common lawcopyright from the moment they were created by the membersof the Contact Commission until publication of the Book. Thequestion is whether those humans transferred that copyright tothe Foundation.[7] Even though the precise words "assign" or "transfer" donot appear in the trust instrument, the members of the ContactCommission demonstrated their intent to transfer the commonlaw copyright in the Papers to the Foundation both throughthe language of the trust instrument itself, and by delivery ofthe printing plates to the Foundation. The trust instrumentprovided that the trustees of the Foundation were "to retainabsolute and unconditional control of all plates and othermedia for the printing and reproduction of the Urantia Bookand any translation thereof. . . ." See Burton, supra, at 219.Under the 1909 Act, a common law copyright could beassigned without the necessity of observing any formalities.D. Nimmer & M.B. Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright,S 10.03[B][2], at 10-45 (1996) [hereinafter Nimmer]. In fact,the mere possession of the printing plates by the Foundation,the purported assignee, may have been sufficient to establishan assignment as against a third party, such as Maaherra, whodoes not claim any superior copyright interest. Id. at 10-46.Professor Nimmer notes that "[t]his was particularly truewhere over a long period of time, the author and other inter-ested parties had acquiesced in the putative assignee'sownership." Id. (citing, inter alia, Burton, supra). Because theintent to transfer ownership of the plates to the Foundationwas clear, and the plates were delivered to the Foundation, wehold that the members of the Contact Commission alsointended to transfer, and did in fact transfer, their copyright inthe Papers to the Foundation. Thus, when the Foundation pub-lished the Book in 1955, the original statutory copyright in theBook automatically vested in the Foundation. See Nimmer,S 9.01[B][2] at 9-17.That does not conclude our inquiry, however, because weare dealing here not only with the validity of the originalcopyright, but with the validity of the renewal.Validity of the RenewalMaaherra challenges on a number of theories, the validityof the copyright renewal certificate the Foundation obtainedin 1983. The certificate stated that the Foundation was claim-ing renewal as the "proprietor of copyright in a work made forhire." Maaherra first contends that the Book was not a "workmade for hire" and that the renewal for that reason is invalid.The 1983 version of the renewal provision of the 1976Copyright Act, applicable to the Foundation's renewal, hadtwo provisos: one dealing with renewals by proprietors of cer-tain works and the other dealing with the renewals of all otherworks. The statute stated in relevant part: Any copyright, the first term of which is subsisting on January 1, 1978, shall endure for twenty-eight years from the date it was originally secured: Provided, that in the case of any posthumous work or of any periodical, cyclopedic, or other composite work upon which the copyright was originally secured by the proprietor thereof, or of any work copyrighted by a corporate body (otherwise than as assignee or licensee of the individual author), or by an employer for whom such work is made for hire, the proprietor of such copyright shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work for the further term of 47 years. . . . And pro- vided further, that in the case of any other copy- righted work, including a contribution by an individual author to a periodical or to a cyclopedic or other composite work, the author of such work, if still living, or the widow, widower, or children of the author, if the author be not living, or if such author, widow, widower, or children be not living, then the author's executors, or in the absence of a will, his or her next of kin shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work for a further term of 47 years. . . .17 U.S.C. S 304(a)(1983).[8] As to whether the Book was a "work made for hire,"Maaherra is probably correct that it was not. The Foundationwas never the employer of any of the spiritual beings, of Dr.Sadler, of the Contact Commission, or of any other entity thatplayed a role in the creation of the Papers that were eventuallytransferred to the Foundation. An employment (or commis-sioning) relationship at the time the work is created is a condi-tion for claiming renewal as the proprietor of a "work madefor hire". See 17 U.S.C. S 101; Bleistein v. Donaldson Litho-graphing Co.,
188 U.S. 239
(1903); Lin-Brook Builders Hard-ware v. Gertler, 352 F.2d 298 (9th Cir. 1965); Rohauer v.Friedman, 306 F.2d 933 (9th Cir. 1962).Before the district court and on appeal, the Foundation hascontended that it would have been entitled to claim renewalas the "proprietor of a composite work." The district courtrejected this contention. Urantia, 895 F. Supp. at 1354. Theproblem, in the district court's view, was not whether thestructure of the Book satisfied the definition of a "compositework;" the district court assumed that it did. Rather, the dis-trict court held that the Foundation had failed to establish"proprietorship" at the time the original copyright wassecured because it had failed to show a "contractual arrange-ment entitling [it] to secure copyright in the variouscontributions." Urantia, 895 F. Supp. at 1354 (citing CadenceIndustries Corp. v. Ringer, 450 F. Supp. 59, 64 (S.D.N.Y.1978)). On this point, we have held the court erred. The lan-guage of the trust instrument was, moreover, very broad, andsufficient to transfer not only the interest in the original copy-right term, but in the renewal as well. See Burton, supra, at219.Maaherra on appeal also contends that even if the Founda-tion would have been entitled to secure the Book's renewalrights as the "proprietor of a composite work, " the inaccuracyin the description of the claim in the Foundation's applicationfor renewal destroyed the validity of its renewal copyright.This issue the district court did not decide.Timeliness was the only clear statutory requirement forcopyright renewal of a work whose original statutory copy-right was secured prior to January 1, 1964. The renewal stat-ute in effect at the time the Foundation renewed its copyrightin the Book required the claimant to apply for and register itsrenewal claim within the last year of the original copyrightterm. See 17 U.S.C. S 304(a) (1983) (providing that copyrightwas properly renewed "where application for . . . renewal . . .shall have been made to the Copyright Office and duly regis-tered therein within one year prior to the expiration of theoriginal term of copyright" and that "in default of the registra-tion of such application for renewal . . . the copyright in anywork shall terminate at the expiration of twenty-eight yearsfrom the date copyright was originally secured[ ]").2 Thus, theFoundation had to renew the Book's copyright by December31, 1983, when the original copyright term was to expire. See17 U.S.C. S 305 (copyright terms "run to the end of the calen-dar year in which they would otherwise expire[ ]"). The Foun-dation timely applied for renewal in January of 1983.Maaherra contends, however, that timeliness is not enough.Focusing on the language of the first proviso of Section304(a), and on a Copyright Office regulation which providesthe manner in which renewal registrations may be corrected,37 C.F.R. S 201.5(b)(2)(iv), she argues that because therenewal certificate described the Foundation as the"proprietor of a work made for hire" rather than as the"proprietor of a composite work", the renewal registration isnot valid.The regulation upon which Maaherra relies, provided in1983: Supplementary registration to correct a renewal claimant or basis of a claim in a basic renewal regis- tration may be made only if the application for sup- plementary registration and fee are received in the Copyright Office within the statutory time limits for renewal. If the error or omission in a basic renewal registration is extremely minor, and does not involve the identity of the renewal claimant or the legal basis of the claim, supplementary registration may be made at any time. Supplementary registration is not appropriate to add a renewal claimant.37 C.F.R. S 201.5(b)(2)(iv) (1983). The regulation would thushave permitted the Foundation to file a supplementary regis-tration to correct its basic registration at any time during therenewal period, if the error was minor and did not "involvethe identity of the renewal claimant or the legal basis for theclaim." Id. However, corrections to the "identity" of theclaimant or to the "legal basis of the claim" could only havebeen made within the statutory time limits for renewal, whichin this case would have expired December 31, 1983.Maaherra claims that because the error the Foundationmade in describing the nature of its proprietorship involves"the legal basis of the claim," the error can no longer be cor-rected, and therefore, the Book was injected into the publicdomain in 1983. There are serious problems with this argu-ment.[9] First, it is not at all clear that the regulation's referenceto the "legal basis of the claim" contemplates the identifica-tion of a particular type of proprietorship described in the firstproviso of section 304(a). Given the structure of the statute,the general term "proprietor" was probably sufficient to iden-tify the "legal basis" of the renewal claim in 1983.[10] Moreover, we have found no case that has ever helda renewal invalid for lack of an adequate description of thebasis of the claim. The only cases in which renewals havebeen forfeited have involved renewals filed by the wrongclaimant, not by someone describing the wrong type of pro-prietorship. The second proviso of section 304(a) establishesthe priority to renewal rights for authors and their statutoryheirs. There are cases holding renewal registrations under thisproviso void, where the renewal was filed in the name of aperson who was a member of the next succeeding class, whenmembers of a priority class living at the time the renewalvested should have filed the renewal, but did not. See NimmerS 9.05 [D][1] at 9-85 (citing, inter alia, Marks Music Corp. v.Borst Music Pub. Co. Inc., 110 F. Supp. 913 (D.N.J. 1953);Yardley v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 25 F. Supp. 361 (S.D.N.Y.1938), aff'd, 108 F. 28 (2d Cir. 1939)). In such cases, how-ever, in contrast to the situation here, the person filing forrenewal was not statutorily entitled to renew under any the-ory; someone else was. See International Film Exch., Ltd. v.Corinth Films, Inc., 621 F. Supp. 631 (S.D.N.Y. 1985)(rejecting renewal application because the renewal was filedin the name of a licensee, instead of being filed in the nameof the author, or by the copyright proprietor). As we haveseen, the Foundation was in fact a proper renewal claimantbecause it was the "proprietor" of the Book both in 1955 andin 1983.[11] Furthermore, even the requirement of accurate identifi-cation of the renewal claimant has not been rigidly enforced.In at least one case, the actual name of the claimant corpora-tion was mistakenly stated in the renewal application, yet theinfringement action was permitted to go forward. Bourne Co.v. Walt Disney Co., 25 U.S.P.Q.2d 1975, 1976 (S.D.N.Y.1992), aff'd on other grounds, 68 F.3d 621 (2d Cir. 1995),cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 1890 (1996). See also Nimmer,S 9.05[D][1] at 9-85-86, (favorably citing Bourne for refusingto cause a forfeiture of copyright based on "uselesstechnicalities").[12] All of this strongly suggests that even if the Founda-tion can no longer correct the "work made for hire" descrip-tion of its proprietorship claim on the renewal form, theFoundation's renewal copyright is not invalid. There is, how-ever, even more compelling authority for this result.[13] The case law is overwhelming that inadvertent mis-takes on registration certificates do not invalidate a copyrightand thus do not bar infringement actions, unless the allegedinfringer has relied to its detriment on the mistake, or theclaimant intended to defraud the Copyright Office by makingthe misstatement. See, e.g., Nimmer, S 7.20 at 7-201 and n.6("[A] misstatement or clerical error in the registration applica-tion if unaccompanied by fraud will not invalidate the copy-right or render the registration certificate incapable ofsupporting an infringement action."), S.O.S, Inc. v. Payday,886 F.2d 1081 (9th Cir. 1989); Harris v. Emus Records, 734F.2d 1329 (9th Cir. 1984) (citing to Burton, supra, andUrantia Foundation v. King, 194 U.S.P.Q. 171, 174-175(C.D. Cal. 1977)); Datastorm Technologies, Inc. v. ExcaliburCommunications, Inc., 888 F. Supp. 112 (N.D. Cal. 1995);Gund, Inc. v. Swank, Inc., 673 F. Supp. 1233 (S.D.N.Y.1987); Craft v. Kobler, 667 F. Supp. 120 (S.D.N.Y. 1987);Dynamic Solutions, Inc. v. Planning & Control, Inc., 646 F.Supp. 1329 (S.D.N.Y. 1986); Alart Assocs. Inc. v. Aptaker,279 F. Supp. 268 (S.D.N.Y. 1968), appeal dismissed, 402F.2d 779 (2d Cir. 1968).We are aware that most of the cases applying a fraud orprejudice standard, and permitting infringement actionsdespite inaccuracies in registration, involve defects in originalregistration certificates rather than in renewals. Original regis-trations can be changed at any time during the original termof copyright, while, as discussed earlier, certain errors in therenewal registration of pre-1964 works, such as the Book,could only be corrected in the last year of the original term.17 U.S.C. S 304(a)(1983); 37 C.F.R. S 201.5(b)(2)(iv)(1983).However, the reasoning of these cases does not turn onwhether or not correction is possible. Indeed, in this circuit,a lead decision applying the fraud and prejudice standard,contains language strongly implying that this standard shouldapply across the board, regardless of whether the applicablestatutes or regulations permit corrections. See Harris, supra,at 1335 (rejecting defendant's contention that the work hadentered into the public domain because of inaccuracies in thecopyright registration, and noting that the 1909 Copyright Actdid not contain a statutory or regulatory scheme providingopportunity for correction of mistakes in copyright registra-tions).These cases generally do not require perfection, but insteadbase their analyses on principles of fair and non-formalisticadministration of the copyright laws. See, e.g., Huk-a-PooSportwear, Inc. v. Little Lisa, Ltd., 195 U.S.P.Q. 763(S.D.N.Y. 1977) ("This court is mindful of the policy thatcourts seek to preserve copyrights rather than invalidate themon the basis of minor defects in registration certificates.");Craft, supra, at 125 (even though the copyright owner had notclaimed "work for hire" on the certificate of registration, thecourt noted that "if the facts sustain his position and if itappears that the misstatement was inadvertent, little turns onthe error; the copyright is not thereby invalidated, nor is thecertificate of registration rendered incapable of supporting theaction").Maaherra argues that the Foundation's claim is neverthe-less barred even under the holdings of these cases because theFoundation intended to defraud the Copyright Office when itstated it was the "proprietor of a work made for hire." SeeDynamic Solutions, supra, at 1341 ("Errors on the registrationapplication do not affect plaintiff's right to sue for infringe-ment unless they are knowing and might have caused theCopyright Office to reject the application.") Maaherra assertsthat the Foundation did not want to reveal to the CopyrightOffice that the "authors" were celestial beings because theCopyright Office would have rejected the application.[14] There is no merit to this contention. The Foundationdeposited two copies of the Book with the Copyright Office.The Book clearly describes its own origin as having been cre-ated at the instance of: "Planetary celestial supervisors [whoinitiated] those petitions that resulted in the granting of themandates making possible the series of revelations of whichthis presentation is a part." We conclude that there has beenno fraud on the Foundation's part, and no prejudicial relianceon Maaherra's part.[15] We therefore hold that the Foundation's renewal copy-right is valid, and that Maaherra infringed it.For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the district courtis REVERSED and the case REMANDED for further pro-ceedings on damages. the end
___________________________FOOTNOTES 1 The district court published six orders: Urantia Foundation v.Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1328 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1329 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1335 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1337 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1338 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1347 (D. Ariz. 1995).2 The harshness of that rule led Congress to amend the renewal provisionin 1992 to provide for automatic renewal. See Copyright Renewal Act of1992, Pub. L. 102-307, Sec. 101, 106 Stat. 264 (June 26, 1992) (applyingonly to works whose original statutory copyright was obtained afterDecember 31, 1963).