Patry on Statutory Damages

• William Patry has provided some additional thoughts on the Coogan v. Avnet, Inc. case.

  Under Section 504(c)(1), the copyright act provides for statutory damages. Instead of proving actual loses, the copyright holder can elect for statutory damages, which the court awards in the range of $750 to $30,000, for each work infringed. Unfortunately, what constitutes a work for the purpose of statutory damages is not always clear.

  In Coogan, the photographer had elected to register his photographs under one single registration. Since the photographs involved a single photographer, subject, and location, the court interpreted the set of photographs as one work. Patry disagrees with this conclusion:

  "Unlike Powell, where there was a single work that was then varied, each photograph in Coogan should be regarded as a separate work (a new way to look at the subject); the fact of a single registration was for adminsitrative purposes, not because the photographs were regarded as a collection. This is not to say there cannot be cases where a single award for a group of photographs is not appropriate, merely that Coogan is not such a case."

  Patry concludes that Coogan undermines the efforts of the Copyright Office in providing a practical registration process for photographers, who often produce a considerable number of photographs each year, which preserves to the furthest extent possible their rights under the copyright law.