Holding district court was not required to convert motion to summary judgment where court did not consider deposition excerpts but, rather, relied only upon pleadings and contract incorporated by reference into the pleadings
Holding that “a plaintiff asserting that a trade dress protects an entire line of different products must articulate the specific common elements sought to be protected,” and that “the artistic combination of cable [jewelry] with other elements” did not sufficiently set forth the trade dress at issue
Holding that whether trial court's "discretionary resort to estimation of statutory damages is just should be determined by taking into account ... the difficulties in the way of proof of either" actual damages or lost profits and that "[l]ack of adequate proof on either element would warrant resort to the statute in the discretion of the court."
Holding that a jury could reasonably find infringement of certain individual jewelry designs within a group of designs registered under a single copyright, and that infringement of an individual design would still be possible even if the designs had improperly been registered as a group
Holding that a ratio of closer to 1:1 or 2:1 is all that due process can tolerate where the $366,939 compensatory damage award was already substantial and only one of the reprehensibility factors was present
17 U.S.C. § 411 Cited 1,489 times 134 Legal Analyses
In § 411(a)'s first sentence, "registration" would mean the claimant's act of filing an application, while in the section's second sentence, "registration" would entail the Register's review of an application.
Prohibiting statutory damages and attorney's fees if the work is not registered before infringement commences, or within three months of the work's first publication
Authorizing the Register of Copyrights to regulate registration classifications, including permitting "a single registration for a group of related works"