$900,000 In Attorney’s Fees/Costs And $330,000 In Statutory Damages Awarded In California When Base Dispute Was Over Around $300,000 In Licensing Fees.
This post shows that it pays to pay one’s owed licensing fees when there is a fee-shifting section under a statute (in this case, the Copyright Act) or under a licensing agreement with a fees clause. Edwart Stolz, owner of several California FM radio station, learned this lesson the hard way in two federal suits in New York and California.
As reported by Marsha Silva in a July 14, 2018 post at the “Digital Music News” website, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP), which licenses the rights for radio stations (among others) to play songs in return for licensing fees to the underlying performers and writers, sued Mr. Stolz both in New York and California federal courts presumably for copyright infringement and breach of the licensing fee agreements. The base dispute involved a little under $300,000 in unpaid licensing fees. Recently, the New York court ordered him to pay $319,000 in licensing fees (presumably the base deliquency plus interest), while the California court ordered him to pay statutory copyright damages of $330,000 and attorney’s fees/costs of around $900,000, all totaling more than $1.5 million. Ouch!