Event: Copyrights and their importance.

On February 14, 2019, I'll be in downtown Oakland to discuss and answer questions about copyrights. Copyrights are often the most important asset of a business. Software programs, website content, digital media, photographs and many other works are protected by copyright law. Eric will discuss the importance of copyrights, avoiding infringement, registration of copyrights and enforcement of copyrights. Eric has 30 years experience and much of the focus of his practice is in the areas of intellectual property.

Our latest newsletter with an article "The Perils of Using Other People's Photos or Videos". A common #copyright problem on the Internet.

What business owners should know before going online - Spreecast

Had a great time today with my old friend Mitch Jackson on a Spreecast broadcast about the legal implications of going online.  We discussed websites, privacy, social media, protecting copyrights and avoiding copyright infringement. 

True Stories: IP registrations work

In the past week, I wrote demand letters for two clients whose intellectual property rights were being violated.  We received instant and complete success in both cases.

In one instance, a former employee was using my client's copyright protected materials.  I sent the former employee a demand letter to cease and desist, to destroy all materials in her possession and send us list of all such materials and a list of all persons to whom she distributed the materials.  The former employee complied with our demands, completely, within two hours. 

In the other case, I wrote a demand letter to a company that was offering a service that was identical to my client's service and was doing so under a brand name that was so close to my client's service name that it constituted infringement.  The other company's CFO called me immediately after receiving my letter and told me that they would stop using the infringing name.

The key in both cases was registration.  In the first instance, I trained my client to register its copyrights and the client did so.  The former employee could have been sued for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and faced enormous exposure to a court award of damages and attorneys fees.

In the second instance, my client had a Federal trademark registration for its name.  The infringing company faced great exposure to a suit for bad faith infringement.

Over the years, I have urged my clients to register their copyrights and trademarks.  Having such a registration gives a tremendous advantage to the owner of such intellectual property.  These cases show the leverage that the owner of a copyright or a trademark can have.

Creative Commons - a good copyright resource for Internet publishers

A difficulty for creative persons on the Internet is that they want their art/content to be widely distributed (go viral) but still want attribution.  Traditional copyright law makes such distribution difficult since each person copying the such content would need to explicit permission of the owners.

A non-profit organization has started a web site called Creative Commons that provides the owners of copyright protected work (art, photos, articles, blogs, etc) with standard licenses that allow dissemination of the material on the Internet without the loss of attribution. 

Owners of copyrights can select how much of their material can be used - with and without attribution.  The owner can also select whether or not derivative works can be created from their work.
I recommend it to bloggers and anyone who would like their work to be re-distributed on the Internet.

Of course, if you did not want your work to be redistributed, then these licenses would not be appropriate.

Stolen notebooks = $23 million judgment

An employee quit his job and took a couple of binders of documents with him to his new job at a competing company.  This is a very common scenario; employees taking information or unique content with them when they leave a job.  They think that no one will know or care. 

However, the outcome proved disastrous for the employee and his new employer.  More than 10 years later, the employee and his new employer were hit with a judgment of more than $23 million dollars for copyright infringement. 

I tell my clients that copyright law is very strong and can provide powerful remedies for the owners of copyrights.  A recently published Federal case illustrates the strength of the U.S. Copyright Act and why one shouldn't steal documents or use misappropriated documents from another company.

In William A. Graham Co. v. Haughy, a Federal appellate court upheld an award of damages of more than $19 million and more than $4.6 million in pre-judgment interest for copyright infringement.   The infringement in this case was for the theft and use of two binders of documents that had been prepared by the plaintiff in the case - an insurance brokerage.  The binders were used by the plaintiff's agents to sell insurance products. 

An employee left the plaintiff's employment and took with him copies of the documents in the binders.  He gave the documents to his new employer, a competing insurance brokerage.  The new employer gave copies of the documents to its agents and used them for more than a decade before the plaintiff discovered the theft and use. 

The plaintiff sued the competing company and its former employer.  Although there is a statute of limitations for copyright infringement, it does start to run until the copyright owner discovers, or should have discovered, the infringement.  The plaintiff sought profits earned by the defendants that were attributable to the use of the documents in selling insurance products.  This is a form of infringement called indirect infringement.  The plaintiff wasn't seeking damages for the value of the documents themselves but the profits that were attributable to their use.

A jury found that the documents helped the defendants to attain tens of millions of dollars in profits in selling insurance.  The jury found that the portion of those profits attributable to the use of the documents was more than $19 million and added pre-judgment interest of $4.6 million.

The lessons:  register your copyrights for all the documents, art and content that you create, and don't steal or use stolen property!

Copyright Trolls - Don't use stock pictures without a license

Intellectual property has become a hardball arena in recent years. Small businesses steal trademarks and trade secrets from each other.  Patent trolls file serial lawsuits extorting money from busineses. Now we have copyright trolls.


A client was recently threatened with legal action by a stock photo company.  This stock photo company sells photographs on-line for use in websites.  Typically, a website owner or developer can download and use a photo for a royalty of $5.00 to $10.00.

My client had a stock photo on his website.  He received a demand letter from a stock photo company that had the rights to sell licenses to use this photo.   My client's website developer had downloaded this photo from somewhere (the developer was a little vague).

The stock photo company initially demanded $1,500.00 and threatened to take legal action if not paid.  My client discussed the matter with the stock photo company which progressively lowered its demand to around $900.00.

The threat of legal action was serious.  If you use a computer to download copyright protected art from a website and use it on your website, you can be liable for up to $150,000 in statutory damages, plus statutory attorneys fees, per download.  So, the potential exposure was huge, even for a lousy stock photo.

The stock photo company had an entire division devoted to collecting large fees from companies that had used the stock photo company's photos without authorization.  They searched the Internet with special software that looked for their photos and then checked to see if the use of the photos was authorized.  If not, then they would aggressively demand outrageous fees and threaten legal action.  Furthermore, the photos on the company's website were easily downloaded without payment of a royalty and watermarks were easy to crop out.  The company essentially had a copyright troll division searching out the unwary using their cheap photos.

In my client's case, the photo on his website was not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.  Since it was not registered, the stock photo company could not collect the huge statutory damages but only actual damages, in this case about $5.00.  My client removed the photo from his website and the stock photo company left him alone when we asked for registration information.

Lessons:
1.   Do not use someone else's photos, pictures, videos, etc. on your website. 
2.   If you are a web developer, pay all royalties necessary for every bit of art on a website.
3.   Ask you website developer for proof of a license for all stock photos or other art on a website.  You will have to pay the price if the developer stole them.