Intellectual Property News and Reports

JOHN M. WALKER, JR., Chief Judge: The plaintiffs-appellants in these consolidated cases appeal from final judgments of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (John F. Keenan, Judge) awarding them statutory damages for copyright infringement pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 504(c). The district court computed statutory damages based on seven “compilations,” in the form of compact discs prepared by the defendants, that infringed the copyrights in thirteen separate works owned by the plaintiffs. We hold that, for purposes of statutory damages under § 504(c), a compilation created without authorization from the owners of the separate, infringed copyrights in its constituent parts is not a compilation contemplated by the last sentence of § 504(c)(1), which states that “[f]or the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.” We vacate the judgments of the district court and remand these cases for the district court to recalculate the amount of statutory damages. Download the decision.