Federal Judge Finds Jury Award In Copyright Infringement File Sharing Case Violates Due Process

On July 9, a federal judge in Massachusetts found that a jury award in a file sharing copyright infringement case violated the Constitution’s Due Process Clause.

The case was brought by Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Bros. Records Inc., Atlantic Recording Corp., Arista Records LLC, and UMG Recordings, Inc. for copyright infringement with respect to songs to which they own the copyrights. The defendant, Joel Tenenbaum, is one of thousands of copyright infringement cases that record comanies have brought against file sharers throughout the U.S. Tenenbaum was an undergraduate when his filesharing was detected and he was was accused of using filesharing software to download and distribute thirty copyrighted songs.

Following trial, the jury found Tennenbaum liable for his infringement, and the plaintiffs elected to purse an award of statutory damages in lieu of actual damages as their remedy. “Statutory damages” are damages specially authorized by Congress which may be awarded even absent evidence of actual harm to the plaintiff or a profit reaped by the defendant. Under the statutory damages provisions of the Copyright Act, for each work that was infringed, the jury was permitted to award no less than $750 and no more than $30,000 or $150,000 (depending on whether the jury concluded that Tenenbaum’s conduct was willful). The jury found that Tenenbaum's infringement was willful and awarded statutory damages of $22,500 per song, which - for the thirty songs at issue - yielded a total award of $675,000.

Tenenbaum sought a reduction of the jury’s statutory damages award and other relief. The Court found that, although the award fell within the broad range of damages set by Congress, it as far exceeding any plausible estimate of the harm suffered by the plaintiffs and the benefits that Tenenbaum had reaped. The court described the award as being "wholly out of proportion with the government’s legitimate interests in compensating the plaintiffs and deterring unlawful file-sharing" and found that "no plausible rationale can be crafted to support the award."

Thus, the court reduced the jury’s award to only 10% of the amount originally awarded - to $67,500, or $2,250 for each of the thirty infringed works, and asserted that, "The Due Process Clause does not merely protect large corporations, like BMW and State Farm, from grossly excessive punitive awards. It also protects ordinary people like Joel Tenenbaum."

The case is Sony BMG Music Entertainment et al. v. Joel Tenenbaum, United States District Court, District of Massachusetts Case No. 07cv11446-NG (July 9, 2010).