Copyright Statutory Damages: Tiers, Registration Timing, and Fees

Copyright statutory damages run from $750 to $150,000 per infringed work, and you can claim them without proving a dollar of actual financial loss. Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), the copyright owner picks this fixed-range recovery instead of proving actual damages plus the infringer’s profits. The eligibility gate is registration timing: the work generally has to be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office before the infringement started.¹

The Three Damage Tiers

Federal law sets three ranges based on the infringer’s state of mind. The tier that applies fixes the floor and the ceiling for each work.

Standard infringement runs from $750 to $30,000 per work. This covers most cases: someone used the material without permission, but the owner can’t show intent and the infringer can’t show a good-faith belief the use was lawful. The judge or jury picks any number in the range.

Willful infringement raises the ceiling to $150,000 per work. The copyright owner has to prove the infringer knew the use was unauthorized or acted with reckless disregard for the owner’s rights. Courts treat the enhanced cap as both punishment and deterrent.

Innocent infringement drops the floor to $200 per work. The infringer has to show they genuinely didn’t know and had no reason to suspect their conduct was infringing.

The copyright owner carries the burden on willfulness; the infringer carries the burden on innocence. If neither side meets its burden, the standard range applies.¹ The statute also creates a rebuttable presumption of willfulness when the infringer provided false contact information to a domain name registrar in connection with the infringement, a rule aimed at piracy sites and counterfeit storefronts.²

How Courts Pick a Number Within the Range

The statute gives courts wide discretion, so the facts of the case drive the outcome far more than any formula. Federal jury instructions point to six factors:

Revenue the copyright owner lost because of the infringement
Profits the infringer earned from the unauthorized use
Whether the award needs to be large enough to deter the defendant and others
Whether the conduct warrants punishment beyond compensation
Circumstances of the infringement, including duration, scope, and how the infringer responded when confronted
Whether the infringement was intentional

Courts can also weigh the expenses the infringer saved by not licensing the work.³

A single unauthorized use of a stock photograph can land near the $750 floor. A company that strips watermarks, uses dozens of images across a commercial website, and ignores takedown notices can see per-work awards climb into five figures. Courts want the penalty to fit the behavior.

Registration Timing Is the Real Gate

Under 17 U.S.C. § 412, you cannot recover statutory damages (or attorney’s fees) unless the work was registered before the infringement began. One exception matters: if you register within three months of the work’s first publication, you keep eligibility even if the infringement started during that window.⁴

For unpublished works, the rule is stricter. Registration must predate the infringement. No grace period.

Miss those windows and you’re not barred from suing. You just lose access to statutory damages and attorney’s fees, and you’re left with the harder path of proving actual damages and the infringer’s profits.

Registration Has to Be Completed, Not Just Filed

You also can’t file suit at all until registration is complete. Under 17 U.S.C. § 411(a), no infringement action over a U.S. work can be filed until registration “has been made.”⁵ In 2019, the Supreme Court held in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC that this means the Copyright Office has to actually grant or refuse the registration; submitting the application isn’t enough.⁶

Timing matters because processing takes time. Online applications average about two months for straightforward claims. If the Copyright Office requests clarification, the timeline stretches to four months or longer. Paper applications average over four months even without issues. If you need to sue quickly, the Copyright Office offers expedited “special handling” that aims for a five-business-day turnaround, with an extra fee on top of the standard registration cost.⁷

What Registration Costs

Standard online registration is $45 for a single work by a single author (not made for hire), or $65 for the standard application covering other situations. Paper filing is $125. Group registrations for photographs cost $55, and group registrations for short online literary works cost $65. Preregistration, available for certain works vulnerable to pre-release piracy, is $200.⁸

Set against a $750 minimum recovery per work, and a $150,000 willful ceiling, those fees are trivial. That gap is the argument for registering early rather than waiting until trouble shows up.

Damages Are Counted Per Work

Statutory damages are awarded per work infringed, not per act of infringement. If someone downloads and redistributes your photograph ten thousand times, you get one statutory award for that photograph. If someone infringes ten different photographs, you can recover ten separate awards.¹

That distinction changes whether a lawsuit makes sense. A photographer whose portfolio of 50 registered images was scraped has 50 separate works in play, each carrying its own range. A musician whose single song was pirated millions of times gets one award regardless of volume.

Compilations Count as One Work

All parts of a compilation or derivative work count as a single work for damage purposes. An album with twelve tracks registered as a compilation is one work. An anthology of short stories, an encyclopedia, and a portfolio registered as a single collection all follow the same rule.¹

That makes registration choice a genuine financial decision. Twelve songs registered as one album equals one statutory award if the whole album is infringed. Twelve songs registered individually equals twelve potential awards.

Multiple Defendants

When multiple infringers are jointly and severally liable for infringing the same work, the copyright owner gets one statutory award for that work. The defendants share liability for that single award. If different defendants independently infringed separate works and aren’t jointly liable, separate awards apply for each defendant on each work they infringed.³

Why Owners Choose Statutory Over Actual Damages

You can elect statutory damages at any point before final judgment. Election replaces the alternative of proving actual damages plus the infringer’s profits.¹

Proving actual damages is expensive. Forensic accounting, expert witnesses, months of discovery to reconstruct lost sales or diverted revenue. For individual creators, freelance photographers, and independent musicians, that proof cost can swallow the recovery. Statutory damages remove the burden. You show infringement happened and that the work was properly registered on time, and the range opens up.

Attorney’s Fees Follow the Same Rule

Under 17 U.S.C. § 505, a court can award reasonable attorney’s fees and full litigation costs to the prevailing party.⁹ Same registration-timing gate applies: the work has to be registered before infringement began, or within the three-month grace period for published works.⁴

Fee-shifting changes what cases get filed. Copyright litigation costs real money, and many individual creators can’t afford hourly counsel. When fees are on the table, lawyers take cases on contingency because a win means the defendant pays the legal bill. Late registration strips fee eligibility, and the economics of most small-plaintiff cases collapse with it.

The Copyright Claims Board for Smaller Claims

Since 2022, copyright owners with smaller claims have an alternative to federal court. The Copyright Claims Board (CCB) is a tribunal inside the U.S. Copyright Office with streamlined procedures and lower costs. The tradeoff is much lower damage caps.

Total monetary recovery is capped at $30,000 per CCB proceeding. Statutory damages are capped at $15,000 per work if the copyright was registered on time under § 412, and $7,500 per work if registration came late. A “smaller claims” track caps total recovery at $5,000. Unlike federal court, the CCB cannot consider willfulness when setting statutory damage amounts.¹⁰

The CCB is voluntary. Respondents can opt out within 60 days of receiving notice, which sends the case back to federal court as the only option. For creators who can’t justify the cost of federal litigation over a handful of works, the CCB is a realistic path to recovery that didn’t exist before.

The Three-Year Filing Deadline

A copyright infringement claim has to be filed within three years of when it accrues.¹¹ Federal circuits split on whether the clock starts when the infringement happens or when the owner discovers it.

In 2024, the Supreme Court addressed a related question in Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy. The Court held that if a claim is timely, the copyright owner can recover damages for infringement that occurred more than three years before filing suit: “a copyright owner possessing a timely claim is entitled to damages for infringement, no matter when the infringement occurred.”¹² The Court did not decide whether the discovery rule is the correct standard. In circuits that apply it, an owner who uncovers years-old infringement can still bring a timely claim and pursue the full statutory range.

A Narrow Waiver for Nonprofit and Educational Uses

The statute forces courts to waive statutory damages entirely in one narrow situation. If an employee of a nonprofit educational institution, library, or archive reproduces a copyrighted work within the scope of their job, and reasonably believed the use qualified as fair use, the court must eliminate statutory damages. The same mandatory waiver applies to public broadcasting entities performing published nondramatic literary works or reproducing transmission programs under a reasonable fair-use belief.¹

The exemption is tighter than it reads. It covers reproduction only, not distribution or public display. The infringer has to have genuinely believed the use was fair and had reasonable grounds for that belief. It applies only to employees acting within their job duties. And even when it applies, the copyright owner can still pursue actual damages and the infringer’s profits. The waiver takes away the statutory alternative, not liability itself.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits
3
Ninth Circuit Jury Instructions. Copyright – Damages – Statutory Damages
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 412 – Registration as Prerequisite to Certain Remedies for Infringement
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 411 – Registration and Civil Infringement Actions
6
Supreme Court of the United States. Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC
7
U.S. Copyright Office. Special Handling (FAQ)
8
U.S. Copyright Office. Fees
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 505 – Remedies for Infringement: Costs and Attorneys Fees
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 1504 – Copyright Claims Board
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 US Code 507 – Limitations on Actions
12
Supreme Court of the United States. Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy