Unauthorized Compilations Do Not Count as One Work for Statutory Damages

WB Music Corp. v. RTV Communication Group, Inc. (2nd Cir. April 19, 2006)

This appeal involved a copyright infringement case where “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.” Since the plaintiffs had not authorized the compilations, they appealed the judgement to the 2nd Circuit claiming that the calculation was in error. The 2nd Circuit agreed:

”[F]or purposes of statutory damages under ß 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 ß 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.”

The 2nd Circuit reached this decision based on the following observations and conclusions:

[T]he district court appears to have concluded that, even though there were thirteen copied works and thus thirteen infringed copyrights, the last sentence of ß 504(c)(1) required the court to award only seven statutory damage awards, one for each of the defendants-appellees' CD products. That sentence provides that “[f]or the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.” 17 U.S.C. ß 504(c)(1). The district court must have believed that if two or more of the plaintiffs' copyrighted works were included by the defendants on a single CD, that CD was a “compilation” that constituted only one work for purposes of computing statutory damages.

To be sure, the last sentence of ß 504(c)(1) is facially ambiguous as to the question posed here: whether a compilation that infringes multiple separate copyrights and is created without the authorization of the infringed copyrights' owners constitutes “one work.” But this court has already answered that question in the negative.

Holding: The 2nd Circuit “vacate[d] the judgments of the district court and remand[ed] these cases for the district court to recalculate the amount of statutory damages.”

Opinion: (Click this link)

Other: Commentary by William Patry