Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. Belts by Nadim, Inc.

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

I concur in the portions of the majority disposition affirming with regard to Na-dim’s appeal. I respectfully dissent with regard to Leegin’s appeal.

The district court denied Nadim’s motion in limine to exclude evidence of lost profits, sales, and reputation. By doing so, it caused the parties to spend a considerable amount of money, and jurors to spend a considerable amount of time and effort, on a jury trial. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Leegin. With no explanation at all, the district court then granted Nadim’s motion for a new trial.

When pressed for an explanation, the district court said that “there was no evidence to support the $245,275 award for the profits gained by defendants.” Na-dim’s own principal, however, authenticated a spreadsheet showing that its gross sales of the infringing belts totaled *577 $245,275. “If the infringing defendant does not meet its burden of proving costs, the gross figure stands as the defendant’s profits.” 1 A reasonable jury could conclude that Nadim, the infringing defendant, had not met its burden of proving costs, especially because the jury learned that Nadim had falsified other…

MEMORANDUM *

The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Nadim’s motion for a new trial on Leegin’s watch-design infringement claims. A district court has broad discretion to award a plaintiff up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each instance in which a defendant “willfully” infringed the plaintiffs copyright. 17 U.S.C. § 504 (c)(2). In § 504(c)(2), the term “willfully ... refers to conduct that occurs with knowledge that the defendant’s conduct constitutes copyright infringement.” Danjaq LLC v. Sony Corp., 263 F.3d 942, 957 (9th Cir.2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, the evidence established that Nadim continued to sell infringing watches after receiving notice of Leegin’s lawsuit, and there is no basis for Nadim’s argument that its infringement of Leegin’s copyrights was not willful because Leegin’s notice failed to identify with specificity the copyrights that Nadim’s watches allegedly infringed. The *575 Copyright Act imposes no such duty on Leegin.

We also reject Nadim’s argument that the district court erred in imposing the maximum statutory damages. Nadim does not point to any basis for concluding that such an award was an abuse of…