Page:Rimini Street, Inc., et al. v. Oracle USA Inc., et al..pdf/5

This page has been validated.
Cite as: 586 U. S. ___ (2019)
3

Opinion of the Court

those six categories. But the Court of Appeals, relying on Circuit precedent, held that the District Court’s $12.8 million award for additional expenses was still appropriate because §505 permits the award of “full costs,” a term that the Ninth Circuit said was not confined to the six categories identified in §§1821 and 1920. 879 F. 3d 948, 965−966 (2018).

We granted certiorari to resolve disagreement in the Courts of Appeals over whether the term “full costs” in §505 authorizes awards of expenses other than those costs identified in §§1821 and 1920. 585 U. S. ___ (2018). Compare 879 F. 3d, at 965–966; Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. v. Entertainment Distributing, 429 F. 3d 869 (CA9 2005), with Artisan Contractors Assn. of Am., Inc. v. Frontier Ins. Co., 275 F. 3d 1038 (CA11 2001); Pinkham v. Camex, Inc., 84 F. 3d 292 (CA8 1996).

II

A

Congress has enacted more than 200 subject-specific federal statutes that explicitly authorize the award of costs to prevailing parties in litigation. The Copyright Act is one of those statutes. That Act provides that a district court in a copyright case “in its discretion may allow the recovery of full costs by or against any party other than the United States or an officer thereof.” 17 U. S. C. §505.

In the general “costs” statute, codified at §§1821 and 1920 of Title 28, Congress has specified six categories of litigation expenses that a federal court may award as “costs,”[1] and Congress has detailed how to calculate the
———————

  1. The six categories that a federal court may award as costs are:

    “(1) Fees of the clerk and marshal;

    “(2) Fees for printed or electronically recorded transcripts necessarily obtained for use in the case;

    “(3) Fees and disbursements for printing and witnesses;