Statutory damage under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c) serves both compensatory and punitive purposes. A plaintiff can recover statutory damages whether or not there is adequate evidence of the actual damage suffered by plaintiff or the profits reaped by the defendant. Peer Int’l Corp. v. Pausa Records, Inc., 909 F.2d 1332, 1337 (9th Cir.1990). "Even for uninjurious and unprofitable invasions of copyright the court may, if it deems it just, impose a liability within statutory limits to sanction and vindicate the statutory policy" of discouraging infringement. F.W. Woolworth Co. v. Contemporary Arts, Inc., 334 U.S. 228, 233 (1952). When an injury can be shown, but neither profits nor damages can be proven, statutory damages are mandatory. See Russell v. Price, 612 F.2d 1123 (9th Cir.1979); Pye v. Mitchell, 574 F.2d 476, 481 (9th Cir.1978).
In Getty Images (US), Inc. v. Virtual Clinics, No. C13 0626JLR, 2014 WL 1116775 (W.D.Wash. Mar. 20, 2014), a Florida couple ran a website from their home, and used the cats images owned by Getty Images. On default judgment, the court awarded statutory damages of $300,000.00 for two registered images. The court held that “[a]n award of maximum statutory damages is appropriate particularly because of the [defendants’] willful conduct and the public interest in protecting copyrights against sustained infringement.” Id. Here, Hanshan’s infringement was made with the full knowledge of Plaintiff’s copyright. Yet, Han removed the ZZB logo to enable and conceal the infringement. (Han Depo., supra). Hanshan showed no respect to U.S. copyright law and other’s rights. After caught stealing Plaintiff’s code, Hanshan engaged in a defamation campaign to devalue the copyrighted work and injure its author with false stories that he replaced Tube.JS with one line of code. To sanction and vindicate the statutory policy of discouraging infringement, Plaintiff requests that the Court award the maximum statutory damage of $150,000 for each of the copyrighted works Hanshan infringed.
