LATURNO AND GRAVES
A LAW PARTNERSHIP
PRUDENTIAL SECURITIES BUILDING
9255 Towne Centre Drive, Suite 520
SAN DIEGO, CA. 92121
(619) 455-9496
FAX (619) 455-0672
Dear Madame/Sir:
You have copied, displayed and disseminated a poem on your home page without a license from its owner and without attribution to him. We are sending you this correspondence to advise you that you are obligated to compensate the owner for your infringement of his copyright and to explain to you what to do in order to be released from this obligation.
Mr. F. <name removed throughout this letter. See footnonte in the article> is the author and copyright owner of the poem entitled "What Life is All About." He published the first version of this poem in 1996 and has subsequently published several other versions. You may view some of them on his home page at <link no longer active>. A copy of the official United States Copyright Office registration of Mr. F's original poem is also posted on his home page.
The poem on your home page is identical to or is a derivative of one of Mr. F's poems. Mr. F. has retained this firm to represent his interests in this matter.
As the author and owner of the copyright on these poems, Mr. F has the exclusive rights to duplicate, disseminate, prepare derivatives of, and to display them. These rights are set forth in Section 106 of Title 17 of the United States Code. Your use of an identical or substantially similar poem on your home page is an infringement of these rights. As a consequence, you are obligated by law to compensate Mr. F under the provisions of Section 504 of Title 17 of the United States Code.
We understand that you may consider your use of this poem to be innocent. Section 504 of the copyright law provides that lack of willfulness or absence of belief that your use constitutes infringement does not relieve you of your liability.
The amount of your liability for your infringement is set forth in Section 504 of the copyright law. It specifies that the statutory damages for which an individual infringer is liable are not less than $500 or more than $20,000. However, these damages may be increased to $100,000 for willful infringement. Further, the minimum amount to which the law may reduce these damages is $200.00 if the infringer can establish he was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright.
You may obtain a release of your liability for your non-commercial infringement of Mr. F's rights by following these instructions:
1. Immediately remove the poem from your home page.
2. Within thirty days of the date of this email, remit to the mailing address shown above the amount of two hundred dollars ($200) payable to Laturno and Graves.
3. Write the URL for your home page legibly on your remittance.
Your timely payment and removal of the poem from your home page in accordance with these instructions will protect you from our commencing further proceedings against you for non-commercial uses of the subject poem on your home page prior to and including the date of this correspondence. Please note, however, that nothing in this letter shall serve to release or reduce any liability of any of the following entities in pending Civil Action # CV 99-01694 DDP (RCX): CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL ENTERPRISES, Inc., Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hanson, Kimberly Kirberger, Health Communications, Inc. Please call me at the telephone # shown above or email me @ sdo@laturnograves.com if you desire to continue using Mr. F's poem on your home page, if you have used the poem for commercial purposes, if you wish to use it for purposes other than on your home page, or if you have any questions about this matter. Should you fail or refuse to remit the above payment, or should you continue to use Mr. F's poem on your home page without his permission, your liability will increase substantially and will also subject you to liability for payment of Mr. F's attorneys fees to recover the amounts you owe him.
A copy of the copyright laws referred to above is provided in Attachment A at the end of this letter or you may view the entire text of Title 17 of the United States Code at {http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17}.
Samuel D. Osowski
Attorney at Law
ATTACHMENT A
Sec. 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 120, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Sec. 504. Remedies for infringement: Damages and profits
(a) In General. - Except as otherwise provided by this title, an infringer of copyright is liable for either -
(1) the copyright owner's actual damages and any additional profits of the infringer, as provided by subsection (b); or
(2) statutory damages, as provided by subsection (c).
(b) Actual Damages and Profits. - The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. In establishing the infringer's profits, the copyright owner is required to present proof only of the infringer's gross revenue, and the infringer is required to prove his or her deductible expenses and the elements of profit attributable to factors other than the copyrighted work.
(c) Statutory Damages. -
(1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $500 or more than $20,000 as the court considers just. For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.
(2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $100,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200. The court shall remit statutory damages in any case where an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a fair use under section 107, if the infringer was: (i) an employee or agent of a nonprofit educational institution, library, or archives acting within the scope of his or her employment who, or such institution, library, or archives itself, which infringed by reproducing the work in copies or phonorecords; or (ii) a public broadcasting entity which or a person who, as a regular part of the nonprofit activities of a public broadcasting entity (as defined in subsection (g) of section 118) infringed by performing a published nondramatic literary work or by reproducing a transmission program embodying a performance of such a work.