Valuing a Copyright Infringement Claim

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Valuing a Copyright Infringement Claim by Joshua Graubart{4:12 minutes to read} “How much is my claim worth?” This vexing question returns every time I consider a client’s copyright infringement claim. Attempting to predict a court verdict is a fool’s game, but there are some basic markers to guide us in valuing a claim.

Section 504 of the US Copyright Act provides 2 alternative methods of calculating damages.

  1. “Actual damages” – familiar to litigators the world over
  2. “Statutory damages” – an unusual method, often intriguing to non-U.S. claimants – that can be quite valuable to copyright holders

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Public Performance of Music: Dramatic, or Non-Dramatic?

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Public Performance of Music: Dramatic, or Non-Dramatic? by Joshua Graubart“On entering an opera or concert hall in Paris you come face to face with a long counter, presided over by three gentlemanly-looking individuals in evening dress, to whom your ticket is given, they replacing it with another, by which you are seated.”
— New York Musical Courier, Oct. 1894.

{4:06 minutes to read} Two of these Parisian gentlemen were representatives of two different French performing rights societies (PROs). (The third, incidentally, was a representative of the Parisian public hospital system, which was then supported by a performance tax.) “Each,” as the Courier explained, was present “to figure his receipts for the day.”  Read more

The Right of Public Performance

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The Right of Public Performance by Joshua Graubart{3:40 minutes to read}

Among the exclusive rights accorded to copyright holders is the right to perform their works publicly, or to permit others to do so.

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