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The copyrights were filed with the U.S. copyright office at some point. If the copyright should be found invalid, does that obligate the former copyright holder to return licensing fees? I somehow doubt it. The licensor acted in good faith; if you now own a worthless license, that is not their fault. Indeed, Warner themselves probably bought the copyrights from someone else (they were founded in 1958) believing them valid. Willful fraud, on the other hand, is another matter.

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Shouldn't the question of willful vs. accidental fraud be the decider in whether penalties are faced, rather than just returning incorrectly claimed fees?

The same way that if someone accidentally pays too little tax they'll be told to pay the difference and will do that, whereas if they lie to try and pay less taxes then not only do they have to pay the difference, they'll also get slapped with fines and/or prison time.

Otherwise the model is there to claim fees you don't have a right to, wait until you get stopped, put your hands up and say "oops we didn't realise" and keep all that money.

edit: Should point out I am giving an opinion on the logic, not the law.

If I'm not mistaken, accidental fraud just penalizes for the value of the fraud, and may wind up being limited to restitution for those who had WB come for collections AND come forward about it. Willful fraud come with treble damages. But I am not a lawyer.

I always cringe when I see this "treble damages" because it must be a person who doesn't understand English very well. Tri_p_le is spelled with a _P_ after all, isn't it?

Then I googled it and found out that is actually the name of the law. It means triple damages. It's from British English and the phrase is still correct in American English.

facepalm

Double/treble

Duplicate/triplicate

Duplex/triplex

Duple/triple?

'Triple' is the weird root-isolation here.

The original Latin verb from which numerals are built is "plicare", which is why in italian you have basically the same word as the original Latin: multiplicare (multiply), duplicare (to double), triplicare (to triple) etc.

I guess the softer "b" versions come from some French influence.

double/triple/quadruple?

double/treble/quadruble?

I'm more familiar with treble being used in music but I'm aware of various uses of representing three in some way.

The idea being the English language is a fun thing.

Triple is used more than Treble in British English as well, but both are completely correct here.

There are people who seemingly understand English just fine but they carry around a labtop in their bag.

Arabs often drink bebsi because in their native language, there is no letter p. For everyone else, there's no excuse! /rant

Well, the melody of "happy birthday" is written in the treble cleff.

If you accidentally pay too little tax, you will still get fined (at least in the US).

From reading the suit, it appears that what they're arguing is that the total fees collected by Warner/Chappell would, if Warner/Chappell had no right to collect it based on copyright, become damages the class-action plainttiffs would then recover back from Warner/Chappell. There may also be provisions in the California Unfair Competition act which would allow the court to order repayment.

There are a lot of copyright and IP blogs out there. I'd wait to hear some legal opinions from them. Still sounds like a fun project!

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