Opinion of the Court
first sentence provides that no civil infringement action “shall be instituted until preregistration or registration of the copyright claim has been made.” The section’s next sentence sets out an exception to this rule: When the required “deposit, application, and fee… have been delivered to the Copyright Office in proper form and registration has been refused,” the claimant “[may] institute a civil action, if notice thereof… is served on the Register.” Read together, §411(a)’s opening sentences focus not on the claimant’s act of applying for registration, but on action by the Copyright Office–namely, its registration or refusal to register a copyright claim.
If application alone sufficed to “ma[ke]” registration, §411(a)’s second sentence–allowing suit upon refusal of registration–would be superfluous. What utility would that allowance have if a copyright claimant could sue for infringement immediately after applying for registration without awaiting the Register’s decision on her application? Proponents of the application approach urge that §411(a)’s second sentence serves merely to require a copyright claimant to serve “notice [of an infringement suit]… on the Register.” See Brief for Petitioner 29–32. This reading, however, requires the implausible assumption that Congress gave “registration” different meanings in consecutive, related sentences within a single statutory provision. In §411(a)’s first sentence, “registration” would mean the claimant’s act of filing an application, while in the section’s second sentence, “registration” would entail the Register’s review of an application. We resist this improbable construction. See, e. g., Mid-Con Freight Systems, Inc. v. Michigan Pub. Serv. Comm’n, 545 U. S. 440,
ment if notice thereof, with a copy of the complaint, is served on the Register of Copyrights. The Register may, at his or her option, become a party to the action with respect to the issue of registrability of the copyright claim….”
