When Suing For Copyright Infringement On A $500 License, Don't Ask For $766 Million
from the just-a-suggestion dept
Eric Goldman has a short blurb describing the outcome in a copyright lawsuit where a title company apparently infringed on the copyright of another company by reusing its web-based "rate calculator" on its own site without a license. Where the case got bizarre was that the copyright holder tried to claim that the title company now owed it every single cent it made, which amounted to $766 million in revenue -- even though (1) a license for the calculator would run $500 for the year and (2) it's difficult to see how all of the company's revenue could have been because of that single rate calculator. Luckily, the judge practically laughed them out of court, calling the request "preposterous." Instead, the court awarded a mere $1,500, or the equivalent of a three year license. As Goldman notes:[This is] an amount that the defendant surely would have happily paid to settle before going to court if the plaintiff would have accepted it. Instead, this is great example of a dispute that had no chance of settling because the plaintiff’s demands were so out of this universe.
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Filed Under: copyright, damages, infringement
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im sure others will try
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Insert the word "know" up there.
And the plaintiff's lawyer could have told said plaintiff that 766 million was extreme to say the least. There was a better chance of getting 100k instead of trying to destroy the title company.
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Yay
Nice work.
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Good for the judge.
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Re: Good for the judge.
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Net profit?
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Re: Net profit?
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What is the "business of music" really worth?
Come to find out many small tech companies have larger market cap than these record guys. Ingram Micro has a market cap of $3.32B. Palm is currently around $700M in market cap. You could buy Bertlesmann 75 times over with Google's Market cap.
It'd be an interesting project to find out how many songs exist in the Sony/BMG catalog to calculate an average real value for a song.
Why do this? Well, I would like to make unsolicited offers to buy masters along with applicable rights. I bet they cost less than some of these legal damages.
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Realistic copyright damages
And... the price for sharing a single $0.99 song... $150,000.
Yes... they are definately unconstitutional!
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