IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—Fed. Cir.: Copyright registrants beware: Mistakes of law are harder to excuse after guidance from the Copyright Office, (Mar 23, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

A government contractor could not claim an innocent mistake in light of the guidance available to it.

A pro se software developer that filed an inaccurate deposit copy along with its copyright registration could not claim that it was unaware of the legal ramifications of its error in light of the fact that it conferred with the Copyright Office during the filing process and had available to it extensive written guidance about how to properly make the application, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has found. The court, in affirming in an unpublished decision the Claims Court’s grant of summary judgment against the contractor on its copyright infringement and breach of contract claims, also found that the contractor failed to meet a key procedural threshold before bringing the claim and improperly tried to alter its argument on appeal (Healthestate, LLC v. U.S., No. 24-1336 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 20, 2026)).

.The lawsuit involves a software developer and government contractor named HEALTHeSTATE. The company specializes in developing tools that enable healthcare providers to manage patient records (“No platform in human history has hosted so many patient records worldwide,” the company’s website asserts.) The company originally provided services just for military use. However, it later branched out into civilian use (through a subsidiary, HEALTHeSTATE) and, eventually, into veterinary use. It is the latter venture that is the subject of this lawsuit.

The veterinary program at issue in this case, called the Remote Online Veterinary Record program (or more pithily, “ROVR”), is designed to enable Army veterinarians to maintain treatment records for government-owned animals. HEALTHeSTATE (or “HeS,” as the court refers to it) worked with another government contractor, ASM Research, to develop the program. The ROVR program used HeS’s civilian application as the new veterinary services program’s foundation. The subcontract between ASM Research and HeS, entered into in 2012, specified that HeS would continue to have sole ownership to its “baseline software.”

The dispute arose after the agreement between HeS and ASM expired in 2014. Later that year, without HeS’s knowledge, ASM transferred the ROVR source code to the Defense Health Agency. The DHA, in turn, provided a sole-source contract to ASM for continued maintenance and technical support of the program. HeS, believing it had been wronged, sued the government in the federal Court of Claims for copyright infringement and breach of contract. The government, in turn, brought ASM into the litigation as a third party defendant.

While the breach of contract proceeded on a generally linear path, the copyright claim took a sharp detour during discovery. The government and ASR, seeking to undermine the claim, argued that HeS’s copyright registration knowingly contained several material inaccuracies. The court of claims, finding the government’s allegations to be made in good faith, referred the matter to the Register of Copyrights. The Register, in turn, reported back that if the Copyright Office had been aware of the alleged inaccuracies, it would have refused registration.

With this detour out of the way, the court of claims granted summary judgment to the government and ASR on both the copyright and contract breach claims. HeS appealed, leading to this opinion.

“Sum certain.” The court of appeals first found that, regardless of the merits of the claims, the claim failed as a matter of procedure. Under government contract law, the court of appeals noted, a contractor who brings a compensation claim against the government must begin by making a written demand seeking “the payment of money in a sum certain.” Here, however, HeS did not do so, the court of appeals found. Rather, the court noted, HeS asserted “four different methods of calculating a sum certain, each resulting in a different dollar amount.” That failure, the court noted, was fatal to its claim.

Breach of contract. The breach of contract claim also independently failed, the court of appeals found. Here too, the analysis was fairly straightforward. Before the court of claims, the court noted, HeS argued that the government breached terms contained in the ROVR program’s end user license agreement. But on appeal, the court noted, HeS argued that the government breached terms in a different agreement—namely, a government contract that had been awarded to HeS in 2009. “HeS cannot now raise for the first time on appeal a new breach of contract theory not raised before the Claims Court,” the court of appeals found. The decision below was easily affirmed on this basis.

Copyright infringement. The court of appeals also independently upheld the dismissal of the copyright infringement claim. Under Section 411 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 411, simple inaccuracies in a copyright registration application do not, in and of themselves, make the registration invalid. However, those inaccuracies do make the registration invalid if the defendant meets two conditions. First, the defendant must show, the inaccurate information was included on the application for copyright registration “with knowledge that it was inaccurate.” Second, the defendant must show, the inaccuracy of the information, “if known,” would have caused the Register of Copyrights to refuse registration. The second prong had clearly been established by the Register’s response to the referral. But was the first prong satisfied? The court of claims found that it was. The court of appeals agreed.

The court of claims got it right, the court of appeals found, because it correctly found that the copyright registration was materially inaccurate—and most importantly, that HeS knew about the inaccuracies. As to the first question, the court found, that was straightforward. The government challenged several aspects of the registration but trained most of its fire on the deposit copy of the source code. The court of claims found that the deposit copy was inaccurate, the court of appeals noted, because it contained source code that was developed after the date of the software being registered. There was no material dispute about that fact, the court of appeals found—indeed, HeS’s CEO conceded the point himself in a declaration.

The court of claims also found that HeS knowingly made the errors—or at least acted with “willful blindness” to them. Under Supreme Court precedent, the court noted, lack of knowledge “of either fact or law” can excuse an inaccuracy in a copyright registration. As to the first, the court of appeals noted, the court of claims correctly found that the CEO’s testimony established that HeS knew the deposit copy was factually inaccurate. “We agree with the Claims Court,” the court of appeals found, “that there is no genuine issue of material fact as to the question of whether [HeS] had knowledge of the underlying facts that produced the inaccuracy in the deposit copies.”

The court of claims also got it right, the court of appeals found, in concluding that HeS was aware of its mistake of law as well. HeS argued that it could not have been aware of the legal significant of the error because it prepared the copyright registrations “in a very short time without advice or assistance from counsel.” But critically, the court of appeals noted, HeS did seek guidance from the Copyright Office in making its application. Moreover, the court of appeals noted, “the Copyright Office provides resources for pro se applicants, including an extensive Compendium.” (Readers can find that compendium here.) Thus, based on “circumstantial evidence, including the significance of the legal error and the clarity of the requirements for deposit copies,” the court of appeals found “HeS was at least willfully blind to the legally inaccurate information.” Summary judgment was properly granted.

The Case is No. 24-1336.

Judge: Reyna, J.

Attorneys: Bryant Steven Banes (Neel, Hooper & Banes, PC) for Healthestate, LLC. Jenna Elizabeth Munnelly, U.S. Department of Justice, for the U.S.

Companies: Healthestate, LLC

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