Can a person be sued retroactively for copyright infringement? Consider a blog on which the blog author displays images taken from internet sources. The author later learns about copyright implications of this. If the blog author removes the images from the site, is it possible that a company or individual could sue the blog author retroactively for infringing the copyright of an image, assuming that they have archival evidence of its use? Is it likely? I am interested in the UK law.
If you commit a robbery but then return the money, can you be prosecuted? Yes. Similarly, if you breach copyright and then stop, can you be prosecuted? Yes, however, you will probably not be because: Your offence may not have been noticed by the copyright holder, and/or The damages they would get are probably not worth the effort.
Yes a company can be sued (since anyone can sue anyone). But in order to win a lawsuit, you have to have damages as a result of some action, AND you must prove that the action was done with intent to harm or was otherwise negligent. So following your website example, a lot of things would have to happen: The website would have to be hacked. If the passwords are encrypted instead of hashed (which still qualifies as "plain-text" once they email it to you), the hacker would have to figure out how to decrypt the passwords. (Which a good hacker could probably do.) The hacker would have to take those passwords and do something with them that causes damage to their owners. Even if all of those things happened, you would still also have to prove negligence on their part which would be pretty difficult to do because the flaw that was hacked would be the focus of negligence discussions moreso than what was stolen. That being said, if your goal is simply to get them to fix the problem, rather than receive monetary damages, then you could still sue for an action to be taken. You'd have to pay by the hour for the attorney since they wouldn't have a chance of winning monetary damages. But in all likelihood the website owner, upon seeing the lawsuit, would fix the problem before it gets to court, so I could see that having the desired effect. That is if you think it's worth the cost of filing the lawsuit in the first place. Perhaps you could save yourself the cost of an attorney and just threaten to sue if they don't fix the problem.
If soemoen sues you for infringement of a design copyright, it would be a valid defense that the plaintiff had in fact taken the design elements from your prior work, or indeed from the work of a third party, and so had no valid copyright. Proving this may be easy or hard, depending on the specifics of the situation. Registration will prove that your work existed and you claimed it as original on a specific date. It would not be a perfect defense: if the other party claimed that you had copied prior to that date an infringement action could proceed. The effect of registration is somewhat different in US law and the law of various EU countries. In the US, for one thing, one must register before bringing an infringement suit, and the date of registration may affect the availability of statutory damages, and of an award of the costs and fees for bringing suit. Note that the protection offered by a design copyright is limited: copyright will never protect an ide3a or concept, and so only the specific expression of a design can be protected by copyright. What this means will vary in particular cases. Specific artwork or logos will each carry its own copyright, and if they are original creations of yours, you can register them. (These would not be design copyrights, but ordinary copyrights.) You can also obtain a single registration for the website as a whole. It is very unusual for one who copies a work, or elements of that work, to then sue the original creator for infringement. Given the existence of archive services, it is often fairly easy to prove how a site looked on a particular date. Ensuring that your site has been archived as soon as possible would make it easier to show that it was not copied from a later work. Some services will archive a particular site on request.
I do not have the phone number, email, or anything else associated with the account. Well, neither do I - so it must be my account. Unfortunately, the fact that you appear in most or all of the pictures on that account does not prove that you own it. It could be the photographer's account. Do I have ANY options here Can you reactivate the email account associated with the Twitter account? Or the phone number? Either would allow you to reset the password and access the account. You can go to court (in California) and seek an injunction ordering Twitter to delete the photos or give you access. Of course, you have the same issues proving ownership here as you did with Twitter but the court may have different priorities (justice) than Twitter does (corporate protection). I had an idea. If you (or your husband) own the copyright in the photos (i.e. one of you was the photographer) you could issue a DCMA take-down notice because the poster (who, according to Twitter, isn’t you) does not have permission (even if they did at the time: permission can be revoked). Twitter would be unable to contact the account holder and would be required to remove the images when they got no response.of course, if the photographer was someone else, they could do it. Or you could break the law and say it was you, although I would never recommend this even with a near zero chance of being caught.
Yes. Money damages can be awarded in this circumstance and would likely be awarded if the infringement was found to have occurred and not to have been fair use. Even in the absence of proof that any profits are made, there are statutory damages that can be awarded on a per offense basis for copyright violations, and trademark cases in addition to having statutory violations can measure damages by harm to the trademark owner and not just unjust enrichment to the infringer.
If the suit is to be filed in the US, the first step is to officially register the copyright. No US copyright infringement suit can be brought until the copyright has been registered. The registration process includes a formal declaration as to who the author is (or authors are). (I believe this statement is made under penalty of perjury.) Once the registration issues, the certificate of registration is admissible evidence of the facts stated in it in a us court. Indeed 17 USC 410 (c) provides that: (c) In any judicial proceedings the certificate of a registration made before or within five years after first publication of the work shall constitute prima facie evidence of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate. The evidentiary weight to be accorded the certificate of a registration made thereafter shall be within the discretion of the court. In other countries, the testimony of the plaintiff in a copyright infringement suit is itself evidence that the work was created as stated. In either case, it is possible for the defendant to challenge the assertion and claim that s/he is the actual author. Showing when and where the work was first published can usefully corroborate the plaintiff's testimony. Having included a copyright notice in the initial publication may be of value, but if the notice only lists the pen name, it is not of much value. Records of the platform on which a work has been published may help in verifying the identity of the author. So may the testimony of others who saw or read the work, or who were told about it by the author. An author's own copies may be of value, if they carry a timestamp, as computer files generally do. But computer timestamps are not usually secure. Timestamps on email generally are reasonably secure, and could establish that the content existed and had been transmitted on a specified date by a specified person. But none of this will matter unless the defendant claims that the plaintiff is lying in claiming authorship. Unless that happens, the plaintiff's testimony will usually settle the matter. A person whose work seems to have been infringed would usually be wise to consult a lawyer with experience in copyright suits. Such a lawyer could advise if it is wise to bring suit at all, and if it is, what evidence will probably be needed.
A person that fails to comply with a copyright licence does not have a licence to use the copyrighted material. The owner of the copyright can take all the normal actions for copyright violation including seeking an injunction to stop the breach and/or suing for damages. Additionally, if the breach constitutes criminal activity, then the state can enforce those sanctions. However, suing a Chinese company in a Chinese court is generally a hiding to nothing. I won't say the Chinese legal system is biased towards its citizens but I wont say it isn't either. However, a case can be brought in any jurisdiction where the breach occurs (e.g. the USA) and enforcement action can be taken against any assets located in that jurisdiction.
No, one cannot safely assume that because some people have done a thing without being sued, that it is OK to do a similar thing and no suit is possible. It is possible that people who upload a video, or a section of it, have permission. It is perhaps more likely that the copyright owner does not choose to sue, for whatever reason. But a different owner of a different video might make a different choice. Uploading a video, or even a section of a video, without permission, will be copyright infringement, unless an exception to copyright such as fair use or fair dealing applies. Such an infringement gives the copyright owner valid grounds to bring a suit. But the owner can choose whether or not to sue. An owner can sue in one case of infringement but not in another, for any reason or none. If the expected damages are small, it many not be worth the time, trouble, and costs to sue. In the US, one must register a copyright before bringing suit for infringement of that copyright, and there is a fee for registration. Some owners feel strongly about the use of their work, and will sue on any pretext. Some may prefer to tacitly support uses that they approve of by not bringing suit. One cannot tell the attitude of a particular owner unless that owner has stated what his or her view is. Short films are just as protected as full-length feature films, and suit can be filed for infringing the copyright on a short film. But the more expensive a film was to make, and the more money the owner expects it to earn, the more likely it is that the owner will choose to sue. Many people infringe by uploading short films or videos, gambling that the copyright owners will never learn of this, or will not trouble to sue. Sometimes such infringers are correct, and sometimes they get sued. I do not understand what the OP means by the part of the question that reads &quot;There should be more detail and complex lines over here&quot; What additional detail is wanted? Who does the OP expect to provide it? What sort of &quot;lines&quot; does this refer to?