Page:Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy.pdf/6

4 “[T]he plain text of the Copyright Act,” the Eleventh Circuit stated, “does not support the existence of a separate damages bar for an otherwise timely copyright claim.” 60 F. 4th, at 1334. And imposing such a bar, the court reasoned, “would gut the discovery rule by eliminating any meaningful relief” for the very claims it is designed to preserve. Ibid.

We granted certiorari, 600 U. S. ___ (2023), to resolve the Circuit split noted above, and we now affirm the Eleventh Circuit’s decision.

The question on which this Court granted certiorari is “[w]hether, under the discovery accrual rule applied by the circuit courts,” a copyright plaintiff “can recover damages for acts that allegedly occurred more than three years before the filing of a lawsuit.” Ibid. That question, which the Court substituted for Warner Chappell’s, incorporates an assumption: that the discovery rule governs the timeliness of copyright claims. We have never decided whether that assumption is valid—i.e., whether a copyright claim accrues when a plaintiff discovers or should have discovered an infringement, rather than when the infringement happened. See Petrella, 572 U. S., at 670, n. 4. But that issue is not properly presented here, because Warner Chappell never challenged the Eleventh Circuit’s use of the discovery rule below. See ; cf. Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005) (“[W]e are a court of review, not of first view”). And as noted above, a division exists among the many Courts of Appeals applying a copyright discovery rule (11 at last count) about whether to superimpose a three-year limit on damages. See ; Petrella, 572 U. S., at 670, n. 4; Pet. for Cert. 4. We therefore confined our review to that disputed remedial issue, excluding consideration of the discovery rule and asking only whether