No Circuit Split Means P2P Infringement Case Shouldn’t Be Heard by High Court, Justice Says
The Supreme Court should deny cert to a P2P infringement case on the appropriate standard for evaluating statutory-damages awards, the Justice Department told the high court in a brief opposing an appeal by defendant Jammie Thomas-Rasset. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a $222,000 damages award in favor of the major labels against Thomas-Rasset -- the amount from the first of three trials in the long-running case -- saying it didn’t violate constitutional due process because statutory damages, unlike punitive damages, provide “fair notice” to potential defendants (WID Sept 12 p6).
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"The question whether there is ‘any constitutional limit to the statutory damages that can be imposed for downloading music online’ ... is not in fact presented in this case,” the Justice brief said (http://xrl.us/bog8h2). The Supreme Court’s Williams standard prohibits statutory awards that are “so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable,” and though the district and appeals courts disagreed whether that happened in the awards, they agreed it didn’t raise constitutional issues, the brief said. And the 8th Circuit “specifically explained” that the constitutional due process analysis “might well have been different” if more infringed works had been involved and the award “correspondingly larger,” so “this case is not an appropriate vehicle to decide” Thomas-Rasset’s constitutional question.
An award under the Williams standard “does not simply redress a private injury, but also serves to vindicate an important public interest,” Justice said. Federal copyright law recognizes a range of damages “necessary to vindicate those public interests” that spur creation of new works, “and Congress’s judgment as to the appropriate amounts is entitled to deference.” The Supreme Court’s Gore standard for punitive damages, by contrast, “cannot coherently be applied” to a statutory-damages award because punitive damages are leveled in addition to compensatory damages, not in lieu of them, and defendants have fair notice of the range of damages Congress has set, the brief said: The point of statutory damages is to compensate plaintiffs in cases where “actual harm is difficult or impossible to calculate.” The Gore guidelines “were designed for situations in which such legislative constraints are absent,” the brief said.
There’s also no split among appeals courts on which standard applies in a due-process review, Justice said: Only the 6th Circuit has considered the issue directly, and the 1st Circuit has “strongly suggested without deciding” Williams is applicable in such contexts. “None of the purportedly conflicting cases cited by [Thomas-Rasset] involves the Copyright Act.” The 7th Circuit and 2nd Circuit cases she cited discussed the Gore standard “in dicta” -- judicial asides not meant to set precedent -- concerning the impact of class certification on damages awards in federal credit reporting and cable laws.