US Copyright Law: US Copyright Case

US LAW

U.S. copyright law allows a successful plaintiff in a copyright case to obtain an award of statutory damages for copyright infringement by his sole election in lieu of actual damages or an accounting of defendant’s profits. The award is called special or extraordinary largely because it does not require any proof that the plaintiff has suffered an actual harm from the infringement or that the defendant has made a profit from the infringement.[n2] Plaintiff can choose to elect at any time up to the final judgement, and the award is to be granted in any amount that the court considers “just” in a range between $750 and $30,000 per infringed work, and up to $150,000 per work in case of a willful infringement. [n3]

The United States was the first country in the world to adopt the range-based statutory damages provisions into its Copyright Act of 1909[n10]. The historical purpose of such damages provision was to provide the copyright holder with at least some measure of compensation when it was difficult to prove the actual loss suffered by the right holder or the profit made by the infringer.[22] Even though Congress had modest deterrent goals in mind, the focus of the provisions was on its compensatory function [n3]. Section 101(b) governs that the accounting of plaintiff’s actual damages and defendant’s profit is the primary source of remedies in lieu of which statutory damages must be given only when necessary.[n3]. Establishment of range of dollar amounts within which statutory damages must be awarded at courts’ discretion shows the provision’s deterrent purpose. However, Congress also devised guidelines for determining reasonable damages for different types of infringements.[n3] It is also expressly stated in the same ...

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...of statutory damages award. Although there are lists of “factors to consider”, [n96] they have been virtually ineffective as the courts are not required by law to address them at all at their discretion nor are the they required to make specific findings on them.[n98] The factors are usually listed merely for formality, and juries are left with no comparable cases to assess the case at hand.[n100] The absence of robust statutory guidelines and sophisticated jurisprudence have been almost directly responsible for arbitrary and inconsistent awards resulting from similar or sometimes even identical fact patterns. For example, in a series of cases, a number of different entities were sued by the same recording company for making and selling records after termination of their statutory licenses, and resulting decisions were three different statutory damages awards.[n101]