Societe Civile Succession Richard Guino v. International Foundation for Anticancer Drug Discovery

ORDER

WAKE, District Judge.

This case poses the question of whether the Copyright Act of 1976 authorizes the impoundment of infringing property innocently purchased by a non-infringing person. The Court holds that, like the Copyright Act of 1909, the 1976 Act does not provide such a remedy.

I. Background

Plaintiff Societe Civile Succession Richard Guiño (“Societe”) is a French trust formed to preserve the rights of the Guiño family in a set of bronze sculptures created in the early 1900s by Richard Guiño and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Defendants are the International Foundation for Anticancer Drug…