A decade-long copyright battle over North Carolina's most famous pirate shipwreck has ended at the nation's highest court.
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from a local videographer who sued the state for using his copyrighted footage of Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.
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Rick Allen spent years documenting the 1718 shipwreck off the Beaufort coast, only for state officials to post his photos and videos online without his permission. Allen argued the state essentially stole his intellectual property, especially after state lawmakers passed a law declaring all shipwreck media to be public property.
However, lower federal courts ruled that sovereign immunity legally shields the state of North Carolina from federal copyright lawsuits. By refusing to take up the case, the Supreme Court leaves those rulings in place—effectively blocking creators from suing state governments for copyright infringement.
