IP Law Daily, Copyright—CDCal: Website That Posted Lyrics Without Authorization Ordered to Pay $6.6 Million in Damages, (Oct 12, 2012)

By Jody Coultas, J.D.

A website that published lyrics without permission must pay $6.6 million in damages in light of its willful copyright violations, the federal district court in Los Angeles has held (Peermusic, III, Ltd. V. LiveUniverse, Inc., October 9, 2012, Wu, G.).

LiveUniverse, Inc. was held on default judgment to have willfully infringed copyrights in song lyrics held by Peermusic, III, Ltd. The court found the number of copyrighted songs which were infringed was 528.

In order to set damages, the court requested additional submissions as to the licensing fees which would have been charged had they properly obtained licenses to use the copyrighted lyrics. However, Peermusic did not provide the licensing fee information and argued that the court should not set the amount of statutory damages based upon a relationship to compensatory damages.

The court noted that it did not intend to set the statutory damages in an amount based simply on the loss of licensing revenues. Rather the court decided that statutory damages based on a single digit multiple of lost licensing revenues was a good starting point for calculating statutory damages. The statutory maximum in this case was $150,000 per song and Peermusic sought $100,000 per song.

Peermusic was awarded statutory damages in the sum of $12,500 per each of the 528 songs shown to be infringed for a total of $6,600,000 by the court. The award was reasonable in light of the evidence that LiveUniverse’s revenues were not generated solely from the unauthorized lyrics. The court balanced LiveUniverse’s willful violations and multiple contempt orders issued against it with the other evidence to avoid a ridiculously disproportionate award.

No. CV 09-6160-GW (PLAx).

Kandis M Koustenis (Moses and Singer LLP) Peermusic, III, Ltd. Andrew R Kislik (Nassiri and Jung LLP) for LiveUniverse, Inc.

Cases: Copyright CaliforniaNews