NUL Copyright and Scholarly Communication

Dec. 13 hearing on the "Pro-IP" act

The House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual property is holding a hearing tomorrow, Dec. 13, on H.R. 4279, the "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007" or "PRO-IP" act. It should be live webcast.

This bill will dramatically increase the amount that can be sought as statutory damages, and creates a new forfeiture provision for property used or intended to be used for copyright infringement.

William Patry has an extended post up about these two provisions of the bill; here is an excerpt:

Under the bill, there may be 25 [statutory damage awards]: there would be 12 for each track on the sound recording, 1 for the sound recording as a whole, and 12 for each musical composition. Under this approach, for one CD the minimum award for non-innocent infringement must be $18,750, for a CD that sells in some stores at an inflated price of $18.99 and may be had for much less from amazon.com or iTunes. The maximum amount of $150,000 then becomes three million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars per CD.

by Claire Stewart | Legislation | TrackBack