Panoramic Images has been awarded $403,500 in a copyright infringement case against educational publisher John Wiley & Sons. The publisher was found to have used 6 images outside the scope of the license agreement. The case was heard before a jury in the Federal District Court the Northern District of Illinois.
Recently
we reported that in a jury trial
Grant Heilman Photography Inc. was awarded $127,087 for the unauthorized infringing use of 53 images by McGraw-Hill Companies, another educational publisher. Grant Heilman brought this copyright infringement action in Federal Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Grant Heilman and Panoramic Images were both represented by the firm of
Harmon & Seidman.
A key difference in the jury decisions in these cases was the fact that 5 of the 6 Panoramic Images were registered prior to infringement. In the Grant Heilman case none of the images were registered prior to the infringements and thus Heilman was limited to seeking actual damages, including profits and could not elect for statutory damages.
In both the Panoramic Images and Grant Heilman cases the publishers argued that the stock agencies should have known about “storm warnings” (general knowledge of excessive use of images by textbook publishers) or should have been on notice that the respective publishers were not complying with the license agreements prior to 2009.
Both juries rejected this argument. This is significant. If the publishers had been successful in making this claim it might have precluded making claims for other infringements that occurred prior to 2009, or three years before the suits were filed. In the Grant Heilman case there are almost 2,000 additional images still at issue.
In the Panoramic Images case the jury found that Wiley’s infringement of the 5 photographs was willful. The jury awarded damages of $62,500 each for 4 of the images, or a total of $250,000.
For one cover image, the excess use was substantial, and the jury awarded the maximum statutory damages of $150,000. For another individual image that Panoramic Images had not registered before the use, the jury awarded actual damages of $500 and profits of $3000.
McGraw-Hill has filed an appeal in the Grant Heilman case, but the judge has not ruled on it. Heilman is also waiting for the judge to rule on several post-trial motions. In the meantime, Heilman is preparing to go back to trial for the remaining claims in late spring 2015. There is likely to be an appeal in the Panoramic Images case.