Copyright Infringement Damages

A photographer in downtown Los Angeles found 38 of her images on a competitor’s website. No credit, no license, no permission. She wanted to sue. The first question I asked wasn’t about the infringement itself. It was about registration. Had she registered her copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office before the infringement occurred? She hadn’t. That single fact changed everything about what she could recover.

Copyright law gives creators real teeth. The damages available under the Copyright Act can be substantial, reaching into hundreds of thousands of dollars for willful infringement of a single work. But the system has a catch that most creators don’t understand until it’s too late: the timing of your copyright registration determines whether you can access the most powerful remedies. Miss that window, and you’re limited to actual damages and profits, which are often difficult and expensive to prove.

I’m Evan Dotta, a partner at Mister Wolf P.C. I represent photographers, filmmakers, musicians, designers, software developers, and other creators in copyright and intellectual property disputes filed in the Central District of California and Los Angeles County Superior Court. Here’s what you can actually recover when someone steals your work, and what you need to do before the infringement happens to maximize your options.

What Types of Damages Does Copyright Law Allow?

The Two Tracks

The Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. Section 504, gives copyright owners two paths for monetary recovery. You choose one or the other before the case goes to trial. You can’t combine them.

Track 1: Actual Damages and Infringer’s Profits. Under Section 504(b), you recover the actual damages you suffered from the infringement, plus any additional profits the infringer earned from the infringement. The goal is to put you in the position you would have been in had the infringement not occurred, while also stripping the infringer of any ill-gotten gains.

Track 2: Statutory Damages. Under Section 504(c), you can elect to receive statutory damages instead of actual damages and profits. Statutory damages range from $750 to $30,000 per work infringed, at the court’s discretion. For willful infringement, the ceiling jumps to $150,000 per work.

The choice seems obvious. Statutory damages are easier to prove and potentially larger. But here’s where timing matters.

Why Does Registration Timing Change Everything?

The Section 412 Gate

Section 412 of the Copyright Act catches most creators off guard. You cannot recover statutory damages or attorney’s fees unless your work was registered with the Copyright Office before the infringement began, or within three months after the first publication of the work.

Read that again. If you published a photograph in January, someone infringed it in February, and you didn’t register until March (more than three months after publication), you’re locked out of statutory damages and attorney’s fees. You can still sue for actual damages and the infringer’s profits, but you lose the most powerful tools in the Copyright Act.

The U.S. Copyright Office reported receiving 458,916 copyright registration claims in fiscal year 2024. That sounds like a lot. But consider how much copyrighted content is created every day: millions of photographs, videos, designs, songs, and written works. The vast majority are never registered, and their creators discover the consequences only when infringement occurs.

For the photographer I mentioned at the top of this post, the lack of timely registration meant she couldn’t claim statutory damages on any of the 38 infringed images. We still pursued the case on actual damages (lost licensing fees) and the infringer’s profits from the website where her images appeared. She recovered a meaningful amount. But it was a fraction of what statutory damages would have yielded.

If you create copyrightable works regularly (photographs, music, designs, written content, software), register them with the Copyright Office within three months of first publication. The current Copyright Office fee schedule lists the standard online application at $65, and group registration for published or unpublished photographs at $55. That filing fee is the cheapest insurance policy in intellectual property law.

How Do You Calculate Actual Damages?

Lost Licensing Fees

The most common measure of actual damages in copyright cases is the lost licensing fee: what you would have charged the infringer for a license to use the work. Courts call this the “reasonable license fee” or “fair market value” of the use.

If you’re a photographer who licenses images for $500 per use and the infringer used your image in 10 different ads, your actual damages are approximately $5,000. If you’re a musician whose sync license for a commercial is $25,000 and a company used your song without a license, $25,000 is your baseline.

You prove the fair market value with evidence of your licensing history or, if you haven’t licensed the work before, evidence of what comparable works command in the market. Expert testimony on licensing rates is common in larger cases.

Lost Sales and Revenue

Beyond licensing fees, actual damages can include lost sales or lost business from the infringement. If the infringer’s use of your work diverted customers from your business to theirs, the revenue you lost is recoverable. This is harder to prove because you need to establish a causal connection between the infringement and the lost sales.

In the creative industries that dominate Los Angeles, lost licensing fees are usually the primary measure. A Los Angeles intellectual property lawyer experienced in entertainment and media disputes can help quantify these losses. Photographers, filmmakers, and graphic designers have established rates, and courts in the Central District of California are familiar with the valuation methods used in entertainment and media licensing.

How Do You Recover the Infringer’s Profits?

Burden Shifting Under Section 504(b)

Recovering the infringer’s profits is one of the most powerful aspects of copyright damages because of how the burden of proof works.

Under Section 504(b), your burden is limited: you only need to show the infringer’s gross revenue from the infringement. Once you’ve done that, the burden shifts to the infringer to prove their deductible expenses and what portion of profits came from sources other than your work.

This matters because infringers often can’t prove their costs cleanly. If a company earned $500,000 from a product that incorporated your copyrighted design and they can’t show which portion of that revenue came from their own contributions versus your work, the court can award the entire $500,000.

The burden-shifting mechanism also makes discovery critical (the pretrial process where parties exchange financial records). Infringers who destroy records or fail to maintain adequate financial documentation can’t carry their burden, which benefits you.

Apportionment

In cases where the infringer’s product includes both infringing and non-infringing elements, the infringer can attempt to apportion profits. If only 10% of a product’s value comes from the copyrighted work, the infringer argues they should only pay 10% of profits. The burden of proving this apportionment falls on the infringer, not you.

Courts in the Central District are skeptical of speculative apportionment arguments. The infringer needs concrete evidence, not estimates, to reduce their profit exposure.

How Much Can You Get in Statutory Damages?

The Range

Statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. Section 504(c) are calculated per work infringed, not per act of infringement. If someone copies one photograph and uses it in 100 ads, statutory damages apply to that one work. If someone copies 10 photographs, you can claim statutory damages for each of the 10 works.

The ranges:

Standard infringement: $750 to $30,000 per work, at the court’s discretion
Willful infringement: up to $150,000 per work
Innocent infringement: as low as $200 per work (if the infringer proves they had no reason to believe their conduct was infringing)

Judges have wide discretion within these ranges. Factors that push awards higher include the commercial nature of the infringement, the infringer’s financial gain, your losses, whether the infringer continued after receiving a cease-and-desist letter, and the deterrent effect of the award.

Willful Infringement

Proving willfulness is where damages explode. Willful infringement means the infringer knew they were infringing or acted with reckless disregard for the copyright owner’s rights.

Evidence of willfulness includes:

The infringer received a takedown notice or cease-and-desist letter and continued the infringement
The infringer removed copyright management information (watermarks, metadata, credit lines) from the work
The infringer had a pattern of similar infringement
The infringer had access to the copyright registration and infringed anyway

A case I handled last year in the Central District involved a small apparel company in the LA Fashion District that copied a client’s original textile designs and printed them on garments sold through an online store. We sent a cease-and-desist. They ignored it and kept selling. We filed suit and sought enhanced statutory damages for willful infringement. The court awarded $75,000 per work for three designs, totaling $225,000. Had the company stopped after our letter, the award would have been substantially lower.

Can You Recover Attorney’s Fees in Copyright Cases?

Section 505 Discretion

Under 17 U.S.C. Section 505, the court may award reasonable attorney’s fees to the prevailing party. This is discretionary, not automatic. But the Supreme Court’s decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons (2016) set the standard: courts should give substantial weight to whether the losing party’s position was objectively reasonable.

If the infringement was clear and the defendant had no reasonable defense, attorney’s fees are likely. If the case involved genuinely difficult legal questions and the defendant’s position was objectively reasonable, attorney’s fees may be denied even if you win.

Attorney’s fees matter enormously. Copyright litigation is expensive. Attorney’s fees in a case that goes through discovery and trial in the Central District of California easily reach $100,000 to $300,000 or more. For individual creators, shifting those costs to the infringer often makes the difference between filing suit and walking away.

Remember: you can only recover attorney’s fees if your copyright was registered before the infringement began (or within three months of first publication). Section 412 controls this too.

What About Impoundment and Destruction?

Section 503 Remedies

Beyond money, Section 503 of the Copyright Act lets the court order the impoundment and destruction of infringing copies and the equipment used to produce them. During the lawsuit, the court can impound copies and materials. After final judgment, the court can order destruction or other reasonable disposition.

In physical goods cases (counterfeit merchandise, pirated DVDs, unauthorized prints), impoundment stops the ongoing harm. In digital cases, the court can order the deletion of files, removal of content from websites, and even seizure of domain names used to distribute infringing material.

These remedies work with injunctive relief under Section 502, which lets the court issue temporary and permanent injunctions against ongoing infringement. An injunction backed by contempt powers is the most effective way to stop a repeat infringer.

What’s the Practical Filing Timeline for Creators?

Registration First, Then Enforcement

The entire damages framework under the Copyright Act rewards creators who register early and consistently. Here’s the timeline I recommend:

Create the work. Copyright attaches automatically upon fixation in a tangible medium. You own the copyright the moment you save the file, print the photograph, or record the song.
Register within three months of first publication. This preserves your right to statutory damages and attorney’s fees for any future infringement. Group registration makes this efficient. Photographers can register up to 750 published photographs in a single application under the Copyright Office’s group-photo rules.
Monitor for infringement. Use reverse image search tools (Google Images, TinEye), automated monitoring services, and manual searches to find unauthorized uses of your work.
Send a cease-and-desist letter when you find infringement. This documents that the infringer was on notice, which supports willfulness arguments if you sue. It also resolves many disputes without litigation.
File suit if necessary. If the infringer ignores your letter or the damages justify litigation, file in the appropriate federal court. For cases in Los Angeles, that’s the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, which handles more copyright cases than most courts in the country.

At Mister Wolf P.C., we handle copyright enforcement from registration strategy through federal litigation. The entertainment and creative industries in Los Angeles produce enormous volumes of copyrightable work. For the full process of bringing a copyright case, see our guide on filing a copyright lawsuit in California. The difference between a case worth pursuing and one that isn’t often comes down to one variable: whether the creator registered before the infringement occurred.

Pull up your Copyright Office account or create one at copyright.gov. Identify the works you’ve published in the last three months that haven’t been registered. File those registrations today. Then set a recurring monthly reminder to register new works. The $65 per application is the best investment you’ll make in protecting your creative output.

If your work has already been infringed and you’re unsure about your registration status, gather your evidence (screenshots, URLs, dates of publication, dates of infringement) and bring it to an IP attorney who can assess which damages tracks are available and whether the case justifies the cost of litigation.

Copyright Infringement Damages: What You Can Actually Recover in Court