Whether you are the alleged infringer or the copyright owner, calculating damages for a copyright infringement case is critical to determining your potential legal strategy. To analyze, the first thing to take into account is whether the pirated work has been registered with the copyright office. Registered works enjoy greater protection and these registration records can be found in a free online database. To access copyright registration records, you need to go to the Copyright Office website.
Legal and actual damages
Your best legal strategy is not only determined by the best copyright infringement software. Read on to learn more about the types of calculated damages that could help determine what works well for your case.
Statutory damages are usually higher than actual damages and are easier to calculate. Therefore, most plaintiffs or content owners usually choose to sue for legal damages. For illegal file sharing cases, for example, actual damages per pirated song can be around $1; however, legal damages could be $20,000 or more.
Regardless of the actual damages suffered by the content owner, the amount of statutory damages is set by law. Each violation typically ranges from $750 to $30,000, but damages for “innocent offenders” can be as low as $200 and as high as $150,000 if the court finds that the defendant acted “intentionally.” Courts do not award damages outside of this range and consider the purpose of the infringing use, the value of the infringing work, and the intent or status of the infringing party.
In addition to legal damages, plaintiffs may also seek attorneys’ fees and, if awarded, the infringer will owe them all or part of the attorneys’ fees plus their own attorney’s fees. Although attorneys’ fees are awarded at the discretion of the court, unregistered copyrights are never allowed to request attorneys’ fees.
Plaintiffs seek actual damages when their infringed work was not registered prior to the infringement. This type of damage is the calculable profit the infringer has made from copyright infringement or the monetary loss the content owner has suffered.
proper analysis
In addition to gaining a better understanding of the strength of your copyright infringement case, proper analysis of potential damages plays an important role in determining a legal strategy. Calculating damages for copyright infringement is just one of the things involved in determining a person’s rights under copyright law.
Most copyright cases do not go to trial, and some defendants even choose to settle, as the cost of a court case is already high, and additional legal fees may add up as well. So if you feel your work has been infringed, talk to a copyright entity. They can help you identify the individual details that you will need to determine in order to bring the best legal action. Also, they use high-quality copyright infringement software to track pirates.