So if an American stole my books I could sue in Canada under Canadian rules. Excellent. (We have a registration system that functions as prima facie evidence of copyright ownership, but we don't have the same rules about statutory damages).
If you don't have statutory damages it might not be worth it. Then there is the problem of collecting on a judgment against a foreign person who likely doesn't have any assets in Canada
Oh, yeah, I don't think it would ever be worth it. I had a whole book plagiarized and all I did was contact the book sellers. It's all just hypothetical!
That's the reason for statutory damages. You don't have to show any real damages. The judge can award you from $750 to $30,000 per act of infringement. For willful infringement, it can go up to $150,000 per infringement. The court also has the discretion to award attorney's fees.
Are there many successful cases? My understanding was that even with published works, it's so difficult to take any real action that publishers rarely bother.
Sure. If you prove infringement, which isn't that hard to do if infringement occurs, the court has to award the damages. They don't have a choice. But the vast majority of instances of infringement are not going to end up in court. The music industry has probably been most successful at pursuing statutory damage. Just a couple of years ago, a student who pirated music was hit with damage of almost $700K, even though there is no way the music industry could show even close to that number in damages. The award held up on appeal. It was something like $22,000 per song that he infringed. So yes, statutory damages are real, and if you opt for them and win your case you will get the damages. The amount of damages the court or jury decides to award can vary widely.
I'm aware of quite a few cases in the music industry but books? Not so much, and definitely not unpublished. Is there somewhere I can look for details of cases made and won/lost? I don't want to keep bugging you!
I don't know that there are many. There was a case years ago where a paper published excerpts from an unpublished Presidential memoir. Ford or Carter, I think. But if you got an ARC of the next Stephen King novel and published it before the publisher did, you'd have legal issues
Please don't spend time on it unless you also have a burning desire to know! I'm pretty happy with my decision not to register copyright and if I'm careful who I send my unpublished manuscripts to, I think it will be fine. If there was a strong precedent for unpublished authors getting damages for infringements I would change my mind but really, it's not a big deal.
I don't register mine either. Not that I don't think I could get damages if someone infringed - I know I could get at least $750. It's just that the risk of someone infringing my unpublished works is exceedingly small.
You could get it if the person who stole your work wasn't judgement-proof in one way or another. Being awarded the judgement and collecting the judgement can be two very different things, right?
Yes, that's always a consideration. If they're judgment proof, there's not much you can do in the end. But even if you could get the minimum statutory damages award, it would hardly be worth it. On the other hand, if you thought you could get the maximum, and actually collect on it, then it'd be worth doing and I guess you'd wish you registered (or pre-registered) your unpublished work
I'm not a lawyer (particularly a copyright lawyer), but... It seems to me that including a notification of copyright, including the symbol, is only being prudent. It declares that you own the property and intend to protect your rights to it. Many, many cases have come up where the lack of that declaration led to somebody else appropriating it on the grounds that it was public domain. One case that comes to mind is the lawsuit against Mad magazine for using the Alfred E. Neumann caricature. When the plaintiff sued the magazine, the publisher pointed out that copies of it had circulated without a copyright notice, and that the plaintiff had not contested those users, so it was unfair to single out Mad for special treatment. I think there was also a kerfluffle about that "Desiderata" piece; details may be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata
That's exactly why many agents and editors don't like it - you're insinuating that they might steal your work if you don't put the symbol on it. Besides being unnecessary, it's pretty rude. No reputable agent or publisher is going to steal your work, and if you don't know whether they're reputable... why on earth are you submitting to them?
Problem with relying on that case now is that at the time of the Alfred E. Neuman creation, and for many decades thereafter, a copyright notice was required to protect copyright. That requirement was eliminated from U.S. law quite some time ago. Same thing for Desiderata.
I would be doing so in order to protect myself from anyone who might try to pirate it BEFORE it goes to the publisher. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. As an example, a friend of mine had some incredible 'clang' poetry that was lifted off her laptop while she was doing a lab at college. The gal who stole it published it with her name as the author. She was never able to do anything about it because she hadn't registered it for copyright. A very good friend of mine invented the large LED displays used everywhere today, for large clocks and outdoor temperature displays. A colleague of his stole the concept and became very wealthy. He did not think about protecting himself from such people, because he trusted his colleagues. He lost an awful lot of money on that. I don't think it's a bad idea to protect oneself against one's 'friends'.
It is important to distinguish between the benefits of registration and having no recourse when someone steals from you. Your friend with the poetry couldn't bring an action in federal court for statutory damages, but that doesn't mean she can't do anything. She can register after the fact and bring an action for actual damages (if warranted). She could send a notice of the infringing content to the publisher, if there was one other than the author. She could bring an action in court for injunctive relief, etc. Not registering in a timely fashion forecloses certain remedies; it does not mean you can't do anything. Likewise, with the LED display, your friend might well have had a cause of action against the person who stole from him, depending on the facts, notwithstanding the fact that he didn't file for a patent or something.
I understand. I view it similarly to people asking for non-disclosure agreements when they come to talk to me about a patent. When I'm working with a sophisticated client who has done a lot of patent work, they never ask. They know that the need for one is obviated by the rules of professional responsibility and privileges associated with talking to a lawyer. When a new client calls and asks for one before meeting, I know right away this is a person who has never done this before. That's fine - I understand the caution and it doesn't bother me. I just explain to them why we don't need it. I know some other attorneys who are offended by it, under the assumption that the client is assuming they're not trustworthy. Generally, that's not what the client is assuming, they just don't know any better. When you see submissions coming in from authors that have copyright notices affixed, they're almost always from beginners/amateurs, and publishers know it. Probably doesn't bother most of them, but why tag yourself that way?
