Copyright owners will have to wait for the registration process to play out before suing for infringement, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday.

Owners had asked the Supreme Court to adopt the Ninth and Fifth circuits' practice of considering a work registered once an application was submitted to the Copyright Office and the fees paid. But the Supreme Court agreed with the Eleventh and Tenth circuits that the copyright register must complete the application, a process that typically requires about seven weeks.

“The registration approach, we conclude, reflects the only satisfactory reading of Section 411(a)'s text,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in Fourth Estate Public Benefit v. Wall-Street.com.