Is it legal to intentionally wait before filing a copyright lawsuit to maximize profits? Let's say someone uses my intellectual property without my consent and uses it for commercial purposes. Can I wait until they've made many millions of dollars off of my work, so that I can sue and take a large portion of or all of that money? This takes place in the United States
Equitable remedies such as disgorgement (recovery of profits) are typically subject to equitable bars to recovery such as laches. Laches reflects the maxim that &quot;equity aids the vigilant and not the idolent&quot; (Snell's Equity, § 5). The doctrine of laches gives a court discretion to bar a claim when the plaintiff unreasonably delays bringing a claim. It is certainly &quot;legal&quot; for a plaintiff to sit on a potential claim for any amount of time before actually filing suit, but I take it you are asking whether such behaviour would limit the amount recoverable by disgorgement of profits under the Copyright Act. The Supreme Court answered this in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., 572 U.S. 663 (2014). The Court said that given the statutory three-year limitations period in the Copyright Act, laches typically play no role. The concerns about delays normally handled by laches were considered by Congress and reflected in the three-year limitations period (p. 685): That regime leaves &quot;little place&quot; for a doctrine that would further limit the timeliness of a copyright owner's suit. However, in extraordinary circumstances, laches may still play a role. The Court gave two examples: Chirco v. Crosswinds Communities, Inc., 474 F. 3d 227 (CA6 2007): defendants were alleged to be using architectural designs without permission, in violation of the plaintiffs' copyright; the plaintiffs were aware of the building projects but took &quot;no steps to halt the housing development until more than 168 units were built&quot;; the Court of Appeals found that the order sought by the plaintiffs that the houses be destroyed was barred by laches, even though the lawsuit was brought within the three-year limitation period. New Era Publications Int'l v. Henry Holt &amp; Co., 873 F. 2d 576, 584–585 (CA2 1989): plaintiffs were aware for two years of a book being published in violation of their copyright; the Court of Appeals held that laches barred the injunctive relief of destruction, but allowed a damages remedy. The Court distinguished the remedy sought by Petrella from that sought in Chirco and New Era. In Chirco and New Era, the plaintiffs were seeking destruction of the works. The plaintiff Petrella was seeking only disgorgement. The Court said (p. 687): the circumstances here may or may not (we need not decide) warrant limiting relief at the remedial stage, but they are not sufficiently extraordinary to justify threshold dismissal. Should Petrella ultimately prevail on the merits, the District Court, in determining the appropriate injunctive relief and assessing profits, may take account of her delay in commencing suit. In doing so, however, that court should closely examine MGM's alleged reliance on Petrella's delay. This examination should take account of MGM's early knowledge of Petrella's claims, the protection MGM might have achieved through pursuit of a declaratory judgment action, the extent to which MGM's investment was protected by the separate-accrual rule, the court's authority to order injunctive relief “on such terms as it may deem reasonable,” § 502(a), and any other considerations that would justify adjusting injunctive relief or profits. That paragraph emphasizes that in equity, remedies and defences are discretionary and flexible. My reading is that: it would have to be quite extraordinary for a disgorgement remedy under the Copyright Act to be completely barred due to laches; and if the court came to believe that the delay was intentional and with the purpose of trying to run up the disgorgement amount, it may exercise its discretion to reduce the amount that is recoverable.
You can't, in general, know whether a distributor of a work has permission to distribute, or is a pirate site. I verified that they have posted an illegal copy of a work that I created, and I know that I did not grant permission to them (or anyone) to infringe my copyright. Both hosting and downloading works without permission is a violation of copyright law, so both parties are liable. Downloaders may erroneously rely on the "I didn't know!" defense, which in the US carries no legal weight. Even so, if you download my book, it will probably cost me vastly more to sue you for infringement than the damages that I might be awarded over your infringement. Usually, copyright holders go after the pirate sites, and only rarely go after particularly egregious serial downloaders.
Copyright requires originality Your infinity hard drive appears to be a machine designed to violate copyright by immediately copying anything presented to it. Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin were creating original melodies. These do not have copyright until they are fixed in a tangible medium. That's what the hard drive is for. This is insurance against them being sued if they release a song and someone claims it violates that person's copyright - they can produce in court the melody with a date stamp of 2015 (or whatever). GitHub or similar would be even better evidence. In this context there is a specific allegation that melody X infringes copyright. Riehl &amp; Rubin can then go to their records (including metadata) and say no, here is melody X version 1 through n and they all predate your release so we didn’t violate your copyright.
First of all derivative works are not exactly "illegal". They are fully legal if the owner of the copyright in the original work has given permission. If no permission has been given, they may be copyright infringements. But they may fall under an exception to copyright. Under US law, the most common exception is "fair use". See this question and answer for more on fair use. But particularly relevant in this case is that a parody is usually a fair use, although as in every fair-use decision, there is pretty much no clear-cut, hard&amp;fast rule on what is and is not fair use. In the UK and much of the EU (or maybe all of it, I am not sure) there is a somewhat similar concept known as "fair dealing". It is also an exception to copyright. So it is possible that such works fall under fair use, fair dealing, or another exception to copyright, or that the rights-holder has given permission. Secondly, copyright infringement is a tort, not a crime, under most circumstances. It is enforced when, and only when, a copyright-holder chooses to take action, sending a take-down notice or copyright complaint, of filing suit for infringement. Some rights-holders choose as a matter of policy not to take such actions, thinking that such derivative works actually benefit them. That is their choice to make. Some rights-holders don't have the time or money to track down and take action against most infringements, and will only act if they think the derivative work will in some way cost them a lot of money or harm their reputation. Some rights-holders may just not have heard, yet, of specific possible infringing derivative works. As for Acta2, it has not yet been approved, the Wikipedia article linked in the questions says: In order for the text of the directive to become law in the EU, it must be approved by the European Council on 9 April 2019 The article also mentions significant continuing opposition. If it is approved, it is not clear, to me at least, how it will affect sites hosting such content, nor how it will interact with the copyright law of individual EU nations. If approved, it will no doubt take some time before enforcement is widespread. And of course it will only apply when EU law applies. If both site and author are outside the EU -- say if both are from the US -- it seems that it could not apply.
Would they ask for a take down for any other reason, when various other manga reader websites are making money off them? Merely looking at the fact that the other sites have not been taken down is not a good metric to decide if you will face an infringement suit for your own site. Consider the following possibilities: The manga on those sites may be published by a different publisher than the manga you want to host, and that publisher of your desired manga is more litigious. The manga publisher may not have been actively pursuing infringement for the last several years, but they may suddenly decide this fiscal year it's a financially good idea to start aggressively pursuing infringement. They will go after the other sites and your site at the same time. Because you plan to give them money, you are actively drawing attention to your infringing site. While they may not find it worth their while to seek out whatever new infringing sites pop up every week, in this case, they don't have to come looking for you. You show up to them, actively telling them that you're infringing their copyright. Of course, they might not care. They might love your idea. Regardless, the legally sound way to do this is to ask for permission before you do it, rather than forgiveness afterward. If you don't, you are certainly vulnerable to a lawsuit (whether or not the publisher will pursue the opportunity to sue you is a question left to the discretion of the publisher). Considering that myself is not going to be making any money off their work, does this still fall into the category of criminal act? If so, are there more than take down notices that can happen? (C&amp;D? financial punishment? imprisoning?) Having your infringing site taken down is the minimum that could happen. If you commit copyright infringement, the copyright holder is fully entitled to file a lawsuit against you at once. It's possible that they could just file a DMCA takedown notice to your ISP to have the content taken down, but they are entitled to sue you for damages as well. Maybe they won't sue you because it's not worth their while. If not: lucky you! So, ask yourself: do you feel lucky? Copyright infringement is typically a civil offense and only punished with fines. It can only qualify as a criminal offense under 17 U.S.C. §506 when the infringement is &quot;willful&quot; and meets one of the following criteria: (A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain; (B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or (C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution. As long as you don't violate any of those conditions, your infringement is not criminal. Condition B seems most likely, if I am reading it correctly: if your site serves a $10 book one hundred times, then you've met the $1000 threshold. The threshold of what makes an infringement &quot;willful&quot; versus &quot;ordinary&quot; is somewhat nebulous; see Wikipedia's article on Criminal Copyright Law in the United States.
In the US, the author would be able to wind an infringement lawsuit against the re-publisher. Title 17, the US copyright law codified, grants the author the exclusive right to authorize republication, and does not require that a person use their real name. The argument "It was on the internet, it's in the public domain" is utterly without legal merit. The same goes for the assertion that a person loses his rights if he is uncontactable. The author has stated the terms of the license, so there isn't even a reasonable argument that the infringement is innocent (unknowing: "I thought it was with permission). There is no requirement that you have to allow a potential user to hassle you about the license terms. The one thing that is special regarding anonymous and pseudonymous works is that under 17 USC 302, "copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication, or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first". For a work whose author is identified, copyright "endures for a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death". This assumes that the host site has not preempted author's license: Stack Exchange, for example, preempts an author's exclusive right, so you can copy stuff from here accorting to the SE terms of usage.
I would argue that no, there is no copyright for the restored work. Independent copyright is only possible for any original material added, as previously discussed on this site. In this case, the added work was a technical process rather than a creative process, and technical processes cannot be protected by copyright. Copyright licenses would therefore be ineffective. However, I believe one could still impose a license based on owning the copy as opposed to the copyright (contract might be a better term in this case). However, if a third party managed to obtain a copy through some other avenue, any such contract would not be binding on them and nothing could be enforced against them unlike with copyright laws. Another way a license might be imposed is through patent protections, as technical processes can be protected via patents. However, I'm not as familiar with patent law, and this doesn't appear to be the claim being made.
This would likely be considered a derivative work. You would need permission from the copyright holder to make it, especially if you intend to distribute it for profit.