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In this edition of the SCOTUS blog’s daily round-up, Edith Roberts reviews a few of the most recent Supreme Court decisions as well as external commentary on proceedings and practices. Opinions pertaining to copyright law (Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com and Rimini Street Inc. v. Oracle USA Inc.) have been given. Additional cases include  Iancu v. NantKwest and BNSF Railway Company v. Loos.

Edith also documents comments relating to the behaviors and actions of certain justices including Brett Kavanaugh, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and, Clarence Thomas. This round-up features a multitude of unaffiliated opinions and insights into recent decisions.


Yesterday the court released orders from Friday’s conference, adding a patent case to its docket for next term and declining to review two related cases involving public funding of religious institutions. Amy Howe covers the order list for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. At Jurist, Erin McCarthy Holliday covers the patent case, Iancu v. NantKwest, which asks whether a federal law allowing a patent applicant to seek review of a patent denial in district court but requiring the applicant to pay “all the expenses of the proceeding” includes expenses for Patent Office personnel, including attorneys.

At Bloomberg, Greg Stohr reports that although Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the decision not to review the religion cases, “Kavanaugh criticized a state court ruling that bars churches from getting historic-preservation grants from a New Jersey county, aligning himself with conservative justices on public funding for religious activities.” Additional coverage comes from Jessica Gresko at AP, Kevin Daley at The Daily Caller, Adam Liptak at The New York Times, Lawrence Hurley at Reuters, Ariane de Vogue at CNN, Robert Barnes for The Washington Post, and Tim Zubizaretta at Jurist. David Savage reports for the Los Angeles Times that the justices also “let stand a $4-million verdict against two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who were searching for a fugitive and mistakenly shot an innocent homeless couple sleeping in a shed,” “a rare victory for victims of mistaken police shootings.”

The court issued three opinions yesterday. In Rimini Street Inc. v. Oracle USA Inc., the justices ruled unanimously that the term “full costs” awarded to a prevailing party in a copyright case is limited to taxable costs and does not include nontaxable costs such as expert-witness fees. Ronald Mann analyzes the opinion for this blog. Nicholas Chan covers the opinion for Jurist. In another unanimous copyright case, Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, the justices held that a copyright claimant cannot sue for infringement until after the Copyright Office has ruled on its copyright-registration application. Jessica Litman has this blog’s opinion analysis. Leanne Winkels discusses the opinion at Jurist.


Read the rest here.

Originally posted in the “Round Up” category from the SCOTUS blog.

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Jorge J. Perez is an attorney in South Florida. He is also a self-professed history buff.