Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

Abstract

The past few years have seen the rise of a new threat to American access to knowledge and creativity: the attorney copyright troll. While previous scholarship has focused on the copyright owner as a copyright troll, this note examines the motivations and dangers of the attorney as a copyright troll. Guided by the rewards copyright infringement cases offer and equipped with mass mailed letters threatening thousands of purported infringers, these attorneys are practicing a new brand of copyright law focused on extorting money over pursuing legitimate claims. This poses a danger to the spirit of copyright.

Since the efforts of attorney ethics rules and moral pressure have failed to curb this behavior, this note turns to alternative solutions in copyright law itself. This note examines the ineffectiveness of using only licensed works and the possibility of amending the Copyright Act’s statutory damages regime. The first of these is an important, but ineffective, legal protection against copyright trolling, and the solution to copyright trolling calls not for a faulty shield, but an adjustment of the underlying motivations of the attorney copyright troll. Therefore lowering the statutory damages available under Copyright Law and creating a fine for bad faith pursuit of a copyright infringement claim would be best suited for striking at the incentives motivating attorney copyright trolls.

Comments

Texas Review of Entertainment & Sports Law, Vol. 21, pp. 77-112

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