SDNY on Definition of "Work" for Purposes of Statutory Damages under the Copyright Act
Plaintiffs had succeeded on proving liability for secondary copyright infringement on summary judgment, now the case proceeded to the damages stage. In this order, the District Court addressed the issue of the definition of "work" for purposes of plaintiffs' claims for statutory damages under the Copyright Act.
At issue were 9,715 of plaintiffs' sound recordings. Relying on Bryant v. Media Rights Productions, Inc., 603 F.3d 135 (2d Cir. 2010) (previously blogged here) and the language of Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act, defendants argued that plaintiffs may only recover one statutory damage award for any sound recording that was made available as part of an album even if that individual sound recording was also issued as an individual track at some point.
The District Court rejected defendants' argument, concluding that "[n]othing in the Copyright Act [or Bryant] bars a plaintiff from recovering a statutory damage award for a sound recording issued as an individual track, simply because that plaintiff, at some point in time, also included that sound recording as part of an album or other compilation." Thus, the District Court concluded that:
Plaintiffs may recover a statutory damage award with respect to each sound recording that (1) Plaintiffs made available as an individual track, and (2) that was infringed on the LimeWire system during the time period in which it was issued as an individual track. However, for those sound recordings that Plaintiffs issued only as part of an album, Plaintiffs can recover only one statutory damage award for that album, not for each individual sound recording.
The case cite is Arista Records LLC, et al. v. Lime Group LLC, Case No. 1:06-cv-05936-KMW-DCF (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 4, 2011).
