Copyright Damages Articles

Using the United States Courts’ annual Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics, Hampton IP looked at the number of copyright, patent, and trademark cases filed in federal district court and the percent of cases that reached trial annually over the last decade—March 31, 2010, through March 31, 2019.

On January 9, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a ruling rejecting the argument that unregistered copyrights may be eligible for statutory damages when subsequently registered if the defendant infringed the same work differently after the registration (e.g. copying vs. distribution).

On October 22, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 410 to 6 in favor of creating a small-claims court for copyright matters.

In a March 4, 2019 decision, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in a copyright dispute between Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. and Wall-Street.com, LLC to resolve a long-standing circuit split on when copyright registration occurs in accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. §411 (i.e. the requirement for a copyright owner to obtain a copyright registration before filing an infringement suit).

Social media and viral videos have altered the landscape of copyright enforcement. Opportunities to infringe original video content are many and tracking down every instance of copyright infringement is difficult.

An accounting of a defendant’s profit is an often-used economic remedy for copyright infringement under the Federal Copyright Act. Last year, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that a defendant “may retain the return on investment shown to be attributable to its own enterprise, as distinct from the value created by the infringed work.”

Damage experts are often asked to calculate copyright damages based on revenues earned from the sale of products and services other than the copyrighted work.

In February 2009, Hampton IP, then using the trade name Campos & Stratis, sponsored and participated in the Utah Bar Association’s annual IP Summit.