Copyrights & DMCA Compliance

Charles Carreon
The most important thing to know about copyrights is easy to remember. Follow Chicago rules — register your copyrightable works early and often. If you register your copyright timely, within ninety days of publication, you get three big benefits: (1) When you file suit, the court will presume that your copyright is valid, (2) the court is empowered to award you “statutory damages” of up to $150,000 per “willful” infringement without proof of any actual monetary harm, and (3) you may be able to recover attorney's fees. If you wait to register your copyright until after you discover that someone is infringing your work, you don't get any of those three benefits, and if you want to recover anything in a lawsuit, you will have to prove the actual monetary harm. Proving actual monetary harm due to copyright infringement is pretty difficult, so timely registration, and the resulting availability of statutory damages for infringement, is a really good deal.