The Circuits Agree: Copyright Statutory Damages Are Not Subject to State Farm/Gore Due Process Guidelines for Punitive Damages and Need Not Have Any Real Relationship to Actual Damages

摘要

The dust has settled and the Copyright Act's statutory damages remedy is unscathed despite a potentially crippling campaign to tie it to actual damages under the Supreme Court's State Farm/Gore line of punitive damages cases. The First, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth and Ninth Circuits now have held that State Farm/Gore does not apply to statutory damages. Two of those holdings-by the First and Eighth Circuits-were in test cases vigorously fought by broad interests. No circuit has ruled to the contrary. The judicial consensus is so strong that when the Second Circuit recently held that copyright statutory damages need not bear any direct relationship to actual damages and may be justified by considerations of deterrence, it did not even mention State Farm/Gore.