An Award of Statutory Damages Under the Copyright Act for Post-Registration Infringements? It Depends.

Goodell DeVries partner Jim Astrachan published this article in the Drake Law ReviewFull text is available here.

ABSTRACT

In many cases of copyright infringement, the plaintiff is only able to afford to bring an action for infringement if they are entitled to ask the court to award statutory damages and attorney’s fees should they prevail in establishing infringement. While there might be a connection between the amount of statutory damages a court may award, in its discretion, the profits of the infringer and the actual damages, if any, suffered by a copyright owner, 17 U.S.C. § 504(c) allows a court to award between $750 and $150,000 for each work infringed.1 The statute does not require the plaintiff to establish what actual damages they may have suffered from the infringement or what profits the defendant reaped.2

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Commoners in the Land of Trademarks

One of the British tabloids has taken Meghan Markle to task because she wants to trademark “archetypes” for use in conjunction with her Spotify podcast. The tabloid defiantly asserts archetypes is 470 years old. So? They write she should not be entitled to own this word. She is, however, entitled to grab a word from the dictionary and use it as a trademark to the exclusion, in category, of anyone else’s use.

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