Businesses and individuals pay to register for copyright protection for a reason. They desire to control creative original works and may also hope to monetize those works. Unfortunately, copyright infringement is relatively common. Others might re-share original works or even attempt to monetize them. For example, a fly-by-night t-shirt company could print an artist’s original creation on a t-shirt and try to sell it on social media.
Creatives and businesses may need to take legal action in response to copyright violations. What forms of recourse do the courts offer?
Statutory penalties
Depending on the nature of the work and the infringement that occurred, there are statutory penalties that the courts can impose on the infringing party. Those penalties range from $750 to as much as $30,000 per work involved in the infringement.
Actual damages
The distribution or widespread sharing of a work can prevent a creator or copyright holder from monetizing it. In scenarios where another party’s infringement caused a drop in sales or prevented the effective monetization of a creative work, the copyright holder may be able to request compensation for actual damages they suffered because of the infringing activity.
Protective injunctions
The courts can issue injunctions that prohibit additional infringement. They can even compel the infringing party to remove inappropriate online content or destroy physical products that infringe on the copyright holder’s legal protections.
In some cases, a combination of all of these different types of solutions might be the best option. Discussing a copyright infringement scenario at length with a skilled legal team can help people take the right steps to protect their intellectual property and hold others accountable for misconduct.
