National Conference of Bar Examiners v. Multistate Legal Studies, Inc.

questions. Plaintiff hired a well-respected consulting firm todo these reviews and reasonably relied on the results. Iconclude that these reviews in fact demonstrate a good-faitheffort on the part of plaintiffs to detect infringement.Plaintiffs waited less than one year between discovering theinfringement and filing suit, well within permissible bounds.Defendants infringed plaintiff’s copyright, and damagesmust now be determined. NCBE has elected to pursue actualdamages plus PMBR’s profits, rather than statutory damages,pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 504(a). I find that the evidencesupports awarding both actual damages and apportionment of PMBR’srevenues.Actual damages may include both the direct expensesresulting from the copyright infringement and the loss in thefair market value of the copyright. I conclude that the July2005 MBE had to be reprinted at a cost of $59,000 becausedefendants’ copyright infringement had compromised the initialversion. There was no evidence of other expenses or of any lossin the market for plaintiff’s copyrighted materials. I alsodecline plaintiff’s invitation to award lost licensing fees,which are appropriate when copyright infringement substitutes foror interferes with a hypothetical contract between the parties.See, e.g., Davis v. The Gap, Inc., 246 F.3d 152, 166-67 (2d Cir.18