United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 22-1641 LIVE FACE ON WEB, LLC, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CREMATION SOCIETY OF ILLINOIS, INC., et al., Defendants-Appellants. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 16-cv-8608 — John Robert Blakey, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED JANUARY 10, 2023 — DECIDED AUGUST 11, 2023 ____________________

Before SCUDDER, KIRSCH, and JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judges. KIRSCH, Circuit Judge. The Cremation Society of Illinois and its co-defendants sought to recover their attorney’s fees after defeating Live Face on Web’s copyright claims against them. The district court denied their request, concluding that because the defendants only prevailed due to an intervening Supreme Court decision, awarding fees would not advance the purposes of the Copyright Act’s symmetrical fee-shifting 2 No. 22-1641 provision. That conclusion strays from our law, so we vacate and remand for reconsideration. I The Copyright Act authorizes prevailing parties to recover their costs and fees. 17 U.S.C. § 505. This makes sense: A copyright holder who successfully enforces her rights en- courages others to use the copyright system, fostering further innovation. At the same time, a defendant who successfully protects his rights to use things in the public domain neces- sarily gives others a license to do the same. And no matter who prevails, copyright law writ-large benefits from defini- tive adjudications. By encouraging parties to stand on their rights, the Act’s symmetrical fee-shifting provision advances its core purposes. A Four nonexclusive factors guide a district court’s decision whether to award a prevailing party its fees: (1) the frivolous- ness of the suit; (2) the losing party’s motivation for bringing or defending against a suit; (3) the objective unreasonableness of the claims advanced by the losing party; and (4) the need to advance considerations of compensation and deterrence. Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., 510 U.S. 517, 534 n.19 (1994). None of those factors is determinative, each case is different, and a dis- trict court’s analysis must be sensitive to the facts before it. So long as it applies to plaintiffs and defendants alike, district courts may consider any factor that advances the Copyright Act’s purposes. Id. Given the fact-intensive nature of the in- quiry and the district court’s proximity to the litigation, we review a district court’s decision to award or deny attorney’s No. 22-1641 3 fees for an abuse of discretion. See Timothy B. O’Brien LLC v. Knott, 962 F.3d 348, 350–51 (7th Cir. 2020). That we review a district court’s decision to award or deny attorney’s fees for an abuse of discretion tells us nothing about the scope of that discretion in the first place. “[I]n a system of laws discretion is rarely without limits.” Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 579 U.S. 197, 203 (2016) (quoting Flight At- tendants v. Zipes, 491 U.S. 754, 758 (1989)). And when denying a prevailing copyright defendant his attorney’s fees, a district court’s discretion is very narrow. Time and again we have de- clared that “prevailing defendants in copyright cases are pre- sumptively entitled (and strongly so) to recover attorney fees.” Woodhaven Homes & Realty, Inc. v. Hotz, 396 F.3d 822, 824 (7th Cir. 2005) (cleaned up). Our strong presumption flows from copyright law’s asymmetric recoveries. A successful copyright plaintiff can recover damages and receive a judicial recogn