It would be useful to be able to licence the right to litigate cases of
copyright infringement. Many non-profit organisations request copyright
assignment from contributers. One of the more common reasons is because the
organisation would have trouble defending the work (i.e. litigating against
infringers) if they did not hold copyright to most or all of the work.
However, there are problems with copyright assignment. The biggest problem
is that copyright cannot be assigned to two different organizations.The
obvious solution is to allow licencing of the right to litigate copyright
infringments.
To prevent abuse several limitations could be imposed.
One limitation could be that he copyright holder retains the right grant a
licence to an infringer (unless otherwise restricted by contract,
injunction, etc), and can grant amnesty over prior infrigment. Nevertheless
such grants would not be able to reverse a court ruling.
Another limitation could be that when litigating under such a licence, the
sum of compensatory and statutory damages shall not exceed court costs. This
is a maximum. If the company is litigating via one thousand (1,000) the
maximum award is still court costs, not one thousand (1,000)times court
costs. The primary 'damage' should be an injuction. Punitive damages might
need not to be so limited. The licencee would be able litigate over
infrigment of copyright held by by the licencee, and obviously such a limit
would not apply, even if licencees copyright applies to the same work. (I.E.
The organization could sue normally and wityhout such damage limits over
copyright the organization holds, even if the copyrighted work was part of
the sam larger work as a licenced copyright, or even is a lawfully created
derivitive of a licenced work).
Does anything like the above currently exist? If not, would a system like
the one described above have any chance of implementation in the real world?
If the above was not formally implemented, is there any chance a court would
enforce the equivlent if included as a clause of a contract?
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