Court Addressed Statutory Damages Issue under the Copyright Laws

摘要

The circuit court in Venegas-Hernandez v. Sonolux Records, 370 F.3d 183 (1st Cir. 2004), held that statutory damages under the Copyright Act are based on the number of works that have been infringed, not on the individual incidents of infringement. The plaintiffs, children of noted composer Guillermo Venegas-Lloveras who inherited the copyrights of his songs in 1997, filed a copyright infringement action against Sonolux Records, alleging that it had published recordings of two of the copyrighted songs on sixteen albums by different artists. Sonolux failed to answer the complaint and a default judgment was entered against it. The plaintiffs elected to seek statutory damages, rather than trying to prove actual damages, since Sonolux failed to appear and, thus, the plaintiffs could not obtain discovery to prove actual damages.