Page:Rimini Street, Inc., et al. v. Oracle USA Inc., et al..pdf/8

6 awarding “costs” will not be construed as authorizing an award of litigation expenses beyond the six categories listed in §§1821 and 1920, absent an explicit statutory instruction to that effect. See Murphy, 548 U. S., at 301 (requiring “‘explici[t]’” authority); Casey, 499 U. S., at 86 (requiring “‘explicit’” authority); Crawford Fitting, 482 U. S., at 439 (requiring “explicit statutory authority”).

Here, the Copyright Act does not explicitly authorize the award of litigation expenses beyond the six categories specified in §§1821 and 1920. And §§1821 and 1920 in turn do not authorize an award for expenses such as expert witness fees, e-discovery expenses, and jury consultant fees, which were expenses encompassed by the District Court’s $12.8 million award to Oracle here. Rimini argues that the $12.8 million award therefore cannot stand.

To sustain its $12.8 million award, Oracle advances three substantial arguments. But we ultimately do not find those arguments persuasive.

First, although Oracle concedes that it would lose this case if the Copyright Act referred only to “costs,” Oracle stresses that the Copyright Act uses the word “full” before “costs.” Oracle argues that the word “full” authorizes courts to award expenses beyond the costs specified in §§1821 and 1920. We disagree. “Full” is a term of quantity or amount. It is an adjective that means the complete measure of the noun it modifies. See American Heritage Dictionary 709 (5th ed. 2011); Oxford English Dictionary 247 (2d ed. 1989). As we said earlier this Term: “Adjectives modify nouns—they pick out a subset of a category that possesses a certain quality.” Weyerhaeuser Co. v. United States Fish and Wildlife Serv., 586 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 8).

The adjective “full” in §505 therefore does not alter the meaning of the word “costs.” Rather, “full costs” are all