statutory damages – Attorney Evan Brown

October 7, 2020 Copyright

Why get a copyright registration?

A work of authorship is protected by copyright at the moment it is created. If you take a photo or write some software or draft some text, copyright law protects that work the moment it becomes fixed in a tangible medium of expression for more than a transitory duration. You do not need a registration to own a copyright. It exists automatically. But there are certain benefits conferred by registering a copyright.

Copyright registration allows the holder to sue for infringement.

One benefit from having a registration is that the holder of the copyright can sue for infringement. This is a requirement for litigation – a court will not let a copyright infringement case go forward unless the plaintiff shows that it has a registration certificate. And that registration certificate needs to be in hand — it is not enough for the plaintiff to have just applied to register the copyright. It actually needs to have the registration issued.

Better evidence.

A second benefit of having a copyright registration certificate is the evidentiary weight that it carries in court. If the registration is obtained in the five years following the first publication of the work, the judge will look at that registration certificate and give it great importance in ascertaining whether the plaintiff has a valid copyright in the work.

Statutory damages and attorney’s fees.

A third benefit of having a registration is that in certain circumstances the plaintiff can recover its costs and attorneys fees, and be entitled to recover statutory damages. These damages can range anywhere from $750 all the way up to $150,000 per work infringed.

To be entitled to these things the plaintiff must have obtained a timely copyright registration. To be timely, it has to either have been obtained before the infringement began, or if it was obtained after the infringement began, it was obtained within the first three months following the first publication of the work. The key is that timing matters — it is generally advisable to register a work within the first three months following first publication.

Need help with a copyright registration?

Please feel free to give me a call at (630) 362-7237, or send email to ebrown@internetcases.com.

About the author:

Evan Brown, nondisclosure agreements Evan Brown is a technology and intellectual property attorney in Chicago. This content originally appeared on evan.law.

Website liable for statutory damages and attorney’s fees for copyright infringement

Plaintiff photojournalism company sued defendant retail website operator for copyright infringement arising from the publication on the site of two celebrity photographs. Plaintiff moved for summary judgment on its copyright infringement claim. The court granted the motion.

Infringement Claim

Defendant argued that the copyright registration – which was a compilation of photographs taken over a couple of months – did not cover the photographs in question, because the registration made no specific mention of the photos. But the court rejected this argument, finding that the registration certificate for the compilation was valid because (a) all the photographs were by the same photographer, (b) all the photographs were published in the same calendar year, and (c) all the photographs had the same copyright claimant. Defendant could not point to any specific evidence in the record to cast doubt on the validity of the registration.

The parties did not dispute that defendant’s employees copied and reposted the photographs. Accordingly, the court found that plaintiff had established the elements required for a copyright infringement claim.

But defendant argued that it had a license to reuse the photographs, based on the terms of the E! website from which it obtained the photos. The court easily rejected this argument, noting that the defendant had not provided a copy of that purported license agreement, nor come up with any other evidence to support the claim.

Statutory Damages and Attorney’s Fees

The court awarded $750 in statutory damages – the minimum amount that the Copyright Act authorizes. The court based this in part on looking at the actual licensing fees charged for the photographs. Plaintiffs had charged E! a license fee of $75 for use of the photos. Even trebling this amount would not bring the damage calculation within the statutory minimum. So the court raised it to the lowest threshold permitted under the act.

As for attorney’s fees, the court found it appropriate to award fees to promote the stated purposes of the Copyright Act. Specifically, shifting fees here, in the court’s view, served to encourage and reward innovators for their contributions in the march toward progress rather than burdening them with the costs of defending their protected works.

Fameflynet, Inc. v. The Shoshanna Collection, — F.Supp.3d —, 2017 WL 4402568 (S.D.N.Y. October 2, 2017)

April 5, 2016 Copyright

No statutory damages in online copyright case where infringement continued after copyright registration

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If a copyright infringement begins before the plaintiff registers its copyright, and continues after the date of registration, can the plaintiff recover its attorney’s fees and statutory damages for the infringement that occurs after registration? The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana recently considered that question in the case of Bell v. Turner, 2016 WL 1270221 (S.D. Ind. March 31, 2016).

The prospect of recovering statutory damages and attorney’s fees is a big motivator for copyright plaintiffs. The Copyright Act (at 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(1)) provides that a plaintiff can receive an award of statutory damages — in lieu of actual damages and profits — in a sum not less than $750 or more than $30,000 for each infringement. If the copyright infringement is willful, “the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to an award of not more than $150,000.” And 17 U.S.C. § 505 provides that a successful party in a copyright action can recover its costs and attorney’s fees in the court’s discretion.

But statutory damages and attorney’s fees are only available if certain conditions are met. The Copyright Act precludes a plaintiff from obtaining statutory damages and attorney’s fees if the infringement of the work commenced after publication but before registration. The Copyright Act provides, at 17 U.S.C. § 412(2), that “no award of statutory damages or attorney’s fees…shall be made for…any infringement of copyright commenced after first publication of the work and before the effective date of its registration, unless such registration is made within three months after the first publication of the work”.

In Bell v. Turner, the court granted summary judgment to the defendant on the issue of whether plaintiff was entitled to recover statutory damages and attorney’s fees. Plaintiff first published his photo of the Indianapolis skyline online in 2000. In 2009, defendant copied the photo and placed it on his website. In 2011, plaintiff registered the copyright in the work, but defendant left his copy of the photo online, even after the work was registered.

In granting summary judgment to defendant, the court cited to Derek Andrew, Inc. v. Poof Apparel Corp., 528 F.3d 696 (9th Cir. 2009) and observed that “the first act of infringement in a series of ongoing infringements of the same kind marks the commencement of one continuing infringement under § 412.” Because the defendant posted the photo online more than three months before the date plaintiff registered the work, plaintiff was not entitled to recover statutory damages or attorney’s fees, even though the infringement continued after the date of registration.

Bell v. Turner, 2016 WL 1270221 (S.D. Ind. March 31, 2016)

About the Author: Evan Brown is a Chicago technology and intellectual property attorney. Call Evan at (630) 362-7237, send email to ebrown [at] internetcases.com, or follow him on Twitter @internetcases. Read Evan’s other blog, UDRP Tracker, for information about domain name disputes.

March 10, 2009 Cybersquatting, Trademarks

Cybersquatter hit with maximum penalty

Citigroup, Inc. v. Shui, 2009 WL 483145 (E.D. Va. Feb. 24, 2009)

Court enjoins use of citybank.org, orders defendant to pay $100,000 in statutory damages and to pay Citibank’s attorneys’ fees.

Defendant Shui registered the domain name citybank.org and established a site there promoting financial services, sometimes using the mark CITIBANK. The real Citibank, armed with its trademark registrations in over 200 countries and over 50 years of use of its CITIBANK mark, filed suit against Shui under the Anticybersquatting and Consumer Protection Act, 15 USC 1125(d) (“ACPA”).

Citibank moved for summary judgment on its ACPA claim and also asked the court to enter an injunction against Shui. Citibank also sought $100,000 — the maximum amount of statutory damages available under the ACPA, plus payment of Citibank’s attorneys’ fees. The court granted all of Citibank’s requested relief.

To prevail on the ACPA claim, Citibank had to show that (1) Shui had a bad faith intent to profit from using the domain name, and (2) that the domain name at issue was identical or confusingly similar to, or dilutive of, Citibank’s distinctive or famous mark.

Finding of bad faith

The court found Shui registered the domain name in bad faith because:

Shui did not have any trademark or other intellectual property rights in the domain name, and the registration of the domain name was not sufficient to establish any rights.
The domain name consisted of the legal name of Citibank (with one letter difference) and not the legal name of, nor any name that was otherwise used to identify Shui.
Shui had not engaged in prior use of the disputed domain name in connection with the bona fide offering of any goods or services prior to registering the domain name.
Shui’s use of the domain name was commercial in nature. Notably, some of the advertisements on Shui’s site were exact replicas of the marks CITIBANK and CITI. Each clickthrough provided Shui with advertising revenue, even though clicking on a link with Citibank in the title did not redirect the user to any website affiliated with the real Citibank.
Shui clearly intended to confuse, mislead and divert internet traffic from Citibank’s official website to his own in order to garner more clickthrough revenue from the misleading “citibank” advertisements.
Subsequent to the filing of the complaint, Shui sold the domain name for financial gain to a third-party in an apparent effort to avoid liability.
Shui registered other internet domain names which were identical or similar to Citibank’s marks, and the CITIBANK mark was distinctive and famous at the time Defendant registered the disputed domain name.

Confusing similarity

On the issue of confusing similarity, the court observed the strength of Citibank’s mark and the fact that the parties both offered financial services. Taking those facts in combination with the bad faith demonstrated by Shui, the court found the disputed domain name to be confusingly similar to Citibank’s marks.

The remedy

Accordingly, the court found in favor of Citibank on the ACPA claim. The court was stern in its remedy. It found that Shui’s registration of the confusingly similar domain name was “sufficiently willful, deliberate, and performed in bad faith to merit the maximum statutory award of $100,000 and an award of attorney’s fees.”

$100K photo courtesy Flickr user Ricardo (Kadinho) Villela under this Creative Commons license.

Statutory damages for copying competitor’s catalog on website

Silver Ring Splint Co. v. Digisplint, Inc., 2008 WL 2478390 (W.D.Va. June 18, 2008)

Silver Ring and Digisplint are competitors in a niche industry, each producing and selling fine jewelry quality finger splints made of gold and sterling silver. Silver Ring sued Digisplint for copyright infringement alleging that Digisplint copied text from Silver Ring’s 1994 catalog, and posted that text on Digisplint’s website.

Before trial, the court awarded summary judgment to Silver Ring on the question of liability for copyright infringement. The question of damages proceeded to trial. Finding that “nearly identical and very similar text comprise[d] substantial portions of both [works],” and that the similarities were “obvious and persuasive,” the court awarded Silver Ring $30,000 in statutory damages pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §504(c)(1). It found that Digisplint’s copying was willful, and although Digisplint reaped no profits from the infringement, the award was to serve as a deterrent to future conduct of the sort.

Digisplint had filed a counterclaim pursuant to the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) over Silver Ring’s registration of digisplint.com. The court found in favor of Digisplint on this claim, and entered an injunction against any further registration of a confusingly similar domain name. But because Silver Ring registered the domain name in 1998, prior to the enactment of the ACPA, Digisplint was entitled to no money damages, only an injunction.

Tag: statutory damages