Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

statutory damages

Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court

Definitions from Case Law

From 344 U.S. 228 - F. W. Woolworth Co. v. Contemporary Arts, Inc. · 1952Most cited · 800 citing opinions

copyright

The statutory rule, formulated after long experience, not merely compels restitution of profit and reparation for injury but also is designed to discourage wrongful conduct. The discretion of the court is wide enough to permit a resort to statutory damages for such purposes. Even for uninjurious and unprofitable invasions of copyright the court may, if it deems it just, impose a liability within statutory limits to sanction and vindicate the statutory policy.

How often courts cite the case defining “statutory damages”

195019601980200020202030167

Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “statutory damages” — 800 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.