Supreme Court hears case involving pirate Blackbeard’s ship

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a copyright case involving the rights to archival materials documenting the recovery of the infamous pirate Blackbeard’s ship.

In 1998, a production company, Nautilus, began the nearly two-decade task of documenting the salvaging of the recently discovered ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, which ran aground off the North Carolina coast some three centuries ago.

A legal dispute surfaced years later when the state of North Carolina used the company’s archival materials without permission.{mosads}

In response to Nautilus’s demands that the material be taken down, the state legislature passed a law which converted photographs and videos of shipwrecks into public records, which voided a prior agreement between the filmmakers and the state. Nautilus and the company’s owner, Frederick Allen, sued.

The issue before the Supreme Court in Allen v. Cooper concerns the constitutionality of a federal law that appears to give copyright holders the right to sue states, despite a longstanding legal doctrine that generally makes states immune from such litigation in federal courts.

The justices are expected to reach a decision by late spring.