Four Years of the Copyright Claims Board: The Ten Determinations That Matter Most, What They Show About the CASE Act, and When a Florida Creator Should Use It

When Congress passed the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act at the end of 2020, it promised creators something federal litigation had never delivered: a way to enforce a copyright worth a few thousand dollars without spending tens of thousands to do it. The Copyright Claims Board—a three-officer tribunal inside the Copyright Office—opened for claims in June 2022. Four years on, it has received more than 1,700 claims, issued 43 final determinations, and been the subject of a statutory review by the Copyright Office, published in February 2026, that pronounced it a success while recommending a list of amendments.

This post summarizes the ten determinations we consider most instructive, sets out what the record now shows about the Board, and closes with practical guidance on when a Florida creator or business should—and should not—use it. For our copyright registration and enforcement services, see Copyright Matters and Litigation & Enforcement.

How the Board Works:

The CCB hears three kinds of claims: (1) copyright infringement, (2) declarations that a particular use is not infringement, and (3) misrepresentation claims under Section 512(f) of the DMCA for false takedown or counter-notices. Damages are capped at $30,000 per proceeding, statutory damages are capped at $15,000 per work for works registered on time and $7,500 per work otherwise, and a “smaller claims” track with simplified procedures is available for claims of $5,000 or less.

A work must be registered—or an application must be pending—before a claim can be filed, and the filing fee is $100. Participation is voluntary: a respondent served with a claim has 60 days to opt out, after which the claim proceeds only in federal court. The Board cannot award injunctions (though it can memorialize a party’s agreement to stop), cannot award attorney’s fees except for bad-faith conduct (capped at $5,000, or $2,500 for a pro se party), and cannot compel discovery beyond a limited written exchange. Its determinations are binding on the parties, can be confirmed and enforced as judgments in federal district court, and are subject only to narrow review for fraud, misconduct or excess of authority. However, CCB cases are only persuasive authority and do not set a precedent for other CCB cases or legal proceedings.

The Ten Determinations:

1. Oppenheimer v. Prutton (22-CCB-0045, Feb. 28, 2023) — the first contested decision on the merits

A professional photographer claimed that a California attorney had displayed one of his photographs on the attorney’s law-firm website. The attorney participated, asserting fair use and unclean hands. The Board rejected both defenses: posting a photograph on a commercial website to illustrate it is not transformative, and the claimant’s history of enforcement litigation is not “unclean hands.” But the Board awarded only $1,000 in statutory damages—far below the $30,000 sought—reasoning that the photographer had offered no evidence of his licensing fees or actual loss, that the use was on an obscure page, and that the respondent had removed the image promptly.

As the first determination on a contested record, Oppenheimer set the pattern that has held since: liability is found readily where copying is clear, but damages track the evidence of actual harm, and a claimant who proves none will receive close to the statutory floor.

2. Flores v. Mitrakos (22-CCB-0035, Feb. 15, 2023) — the first determination, and the first 512(f) result

The Board’s first final determination did not involve infringement at all. The claimant alleged that the respondent had sent a knowingly false DMCA takedown notice targeting the claimant’s digital content. The respondent conceded that the notice was false, agreed not to file further notices, and the parties submitted a stipulated resolution that the Board entered as a determination dismissing the claim with prejudice.

No money changed hands, but the case demonstrated that the CCB is a practical forum for Section 512(f) misrepresentation claims—claims that are nearly impossible to bring economically in federal court, where the Lenz line of authority sets a demanding standard and damages are typically small—and that a determination can carry a binding commitment to stop the abuse.

3. Armatus Dealer Uplift, LLC v. Wooden Automotive Consultants LLC (22-CCB-0269, July 5, 2023) — $9,000 and an admission

A consulting company that produces training videos for automobile dealerships claimed that a competitor had copied its videos and materials. The respondent participated, admitted the infringement, and the parties settled on terms the Board incorporated into its determination: $9,000 in damages, removal of the infringing materials, and an agreement to cease further use. The determination remains the largest monetary outcome the Board has produced.

Its lesson is that the Board’s most valuable output is often a settlement reached in the shadow of a determination—and that a respondent’s admission and undertaking, once embodied in a determination, are enforceable in federal court.

4. Walters v. Spring Pet Products LLC (24-CCB-0028, Feb. 2025) — $5,000 by default, and the tripling convention

A poet in the United Kingdom discovered her poem reproduced on a Shopify store selling pet products. The respondent, served in the United States, never responded. The Board entered a default determination and, applying what has become its standard practice in default cases, calculated the claimant’s reasonable license fee and tripled it, arriving at $5,000—the ceiling of the smaller-claims track on which the claim had been filed.

The case shows both that foreign claimants can use the Board against U.S. respondents and that the tripling of a proven license fee is now the Board’s default measure for statutory damages where the respondent does not appear.

5. Oakes v. Heart of Gold Pageant System, Inc. (22-CCB-0046, Jan. 24, 2024) — $4,500 and individual liability

A photographer’s two images were used to promote beauty pageants on social media and elsewhere. Neither the pageant company nor its principal participated. The Board found both images infringed, found the principal personally liable for the image posted on her own account—because personal liability depends on personal involvement, not on corporate status—and held only the company liable for the second. It derived a reasonable license fee of $750 from the photographer’s stated range, tripled it to $2,250 per image, and awarded $4,500.

The determination is the clearest statement of the Board’s damages methodology and of its willingness to reach individuals who personally post infringing content.

6. Hirsch v. Southern Chinese Daily News LLC (22-CCB-0255, Feb. 14, 2024) — $3,600 and the importance of comparable licenses

A New York press photographer’s images of a criminal proceeding were republished without permission by the Southern China Daily News. In a default determination the Board awarded $1,800 per image—but only after discounting the photographer’s evidence of a prior $800 license to $600, because the prior license covered a use that was not sufficiently comparable, and then tripling.

The Board’s principle on proving actual damages “requires licenses as similar as possible to the alleged infringement”—is the most useful piece of guidance the CCB has given photographers about what evidence to bring for damage awards.

7. Joe Hand Promotions, Inc. v. Arif Skyline Cafe, LLC (22-CCB-0098, Sept. 22, 2023) and v. The Village Restaurant (22-CCB-0100, Oct. 4, 2023) — commercial broadcast piracy, $3,000 each

The distributor of pay-per-view sporting events—one of the most prolific copyright plaintiffs in the federal courts—brought a series of CCB claims against bars and restaurants that showed its broadcasts without a commercial license. In two default determinations, the Board found the establishments liable and awarded $3,000 each, while dismissing the individual manager of one establishment without prejudice for lack of evidence of his personal involvement.

The cases show that repeat institutional claimants can use the Board efficiently for volume enforcement of modest claims, but that the Board will not impose individual liability on officers or managers without proof.

8. Braun IP Law, LLC v. Vazquez and Marston (“Do We Know Them” Podcast) (23-CCB-0404, Jan. 31, 2025) — the Board’s leading fair use decision

An attorney posted an eight-and-a-half-minute TikTok video defending a client in an online controversy and two podcasters used roughly a minute of it in an episode critiquing her arguments. The attorney filed a CCB claim. The respondents participated and asserted fair use, and the Board agreed, dismissing the claim with prejudice. The Board found the use was for commentary and criticism, the source video was largely factual, the excerpt was only a small fraction of the episode surrounded by “extensive commentary,” and there was no evidence of market harm—“the weight of the fair use factors clearly favors fair use in this case.”

Braun is the Board’s most thorough fair use analysis to date and shows that the tribunal will decide fair use on a full record, that respondents with a legitimate commentary defense can win, and that a claimant who brings a weak claim against a well-represented respondent gains nothing.

9. Shocked v. McInnes (22-CCB-0263, Feb. 8, 2024) — fair use rejected, but $750

The singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked claimed that the commentator Gavin McInnes had used about ninety seconds of her 1988 song Anchorage in his online program. McInnes asserted fair use. The Board rejected the defense because he had used more of the composition than his commentary required and the excerpt was not essential to it, but still awarded only the $750 statutory minimum because Shocked had offered no evidence of actual damages and the Board found no basis to go higher.

Read with Braun, the case marks the boundaries of the Board’s fair use jurisprudence, and read with Oppenheimer, it confirms that winning on liability without proving damages produces a nominal award.

10. Gervasi v. Nagle (24-CCB-0254, July 15, 2026) — implied license rejected, damages tripled

A documentary filmmaker was approached by a distributor who proposed to license her film to universities and sent a written distribution agreement, but she never signed it. The distributor sold copies and performance rights anyway for more than five years. The Board rejected the distributor’s implied-license defense—“an unsigned formal agreement presented to the licensor signals an intent not to grant rights”—and awarded $2,970, three times the distributor’s proven net revenue of $990, noting that the claimant’s $23,000 demand exceeded the $7,500 per-work cap applicable to a work not timely registered.

The determination is the Board’s most recent substantive decision, and it is a useful reminder both that the Board will resolve genuine licensing disputes on the merits and that late registration halves the available statutory damages.

Several other determinations round out the picture. In Mullin v. Velasco (2025) a real-estate photographer whose 26 listing photographs were reused by the property’s new owner in rental listings recovered $1,200—the Board rejected both the $29,978 demanded and the $200 “innocent infringer” figure proposed. In Papula v. Akgobek (23-CCB-0240, Feb. 13, 2025) a designer whose parody logo was copied onto Etsy merchandise won on liability but, having declined to produce her own financial records, only received the $750 minimum. In Johnson v. Sampson (25-CCB-0121, Aug. 18, 2026), the Board awarded $1,500 for a copied textile pattern and ordered the respondent’s attorney to pay $100 for bad-faith conduct. In Gideons v. Buechner (24-CCB-0126, Aug. 7, 2026), the Board dismissed a designer’s claim against a former client as a contract dispute unsuitable for the forum. And in a series of orders, beginning in December 2024, the Board barred a serial filer of meritless counter-notice claims from the forum for a year, and extended the bar when he tried to refile under a different name.

What the Record Shows: The Copyright Office’s 2026 Report

In February 13, 2026 the Copyright Office delivered to Congress the study of the CASE Act’s first three years that the statute required. Its figures, current through December 31, 2025, are the best available measure of the Board’s usefulness.

• Volume. More than 1,700 claims had been filed—487 in the first year, 393 in the second, 462 in the third, and 340 in the first half of the fourth, a rising rate of about 1.7 claims per day. Pictorial, graphic and sculptural works (largely photographs) accounted for 36 percent, audiovisual works 24 percent, literary works 13 percent and sound recordings 11 percent.
• Who uses it. About two-thirds of claimants were self-represented, and about 17 percent were represented by in-house or business personnel, but only 37 percent of respondents retained counsel. Claims came from every state and dozens of countries.
• The compliance bottleneck. Only 43 percent of claims filed were found compliant on initial review, 63 percent received at least one noncompliance order or were dismissed as unsuitable, and fewer than one-third of claimants who received a noncompliance order ever filed a compliant claim. Most claims, in other words, never reached a respondent.
• Opt-outs. As of the end of 2025, 181 respondents had opted out, and 152 proceedings had been dismissed because every respondent did so—roughly one in three proceedings that reached a respondent.
• Outcomes. Forty-three final determinations had been issued, with contested proceedings split roughly evenly between claimants and respondents. Twenty-seven settlement conferences produced agreements in nearly two-thirds of cases, 136 proceedings were resolved by settlement, and more than 100 were voluntarily dismissed. The Office found that abusive or bad-faith use of the Board “has not been significant.”
• Money. The report does not tabulate awards, but the determinations summarized above tell the story: most awards fall between $750 and $5,000, the Board’s standard measure is three times a proven license fee or the respondent’s proven revenue, and the $30,000 cap has not been approached in a contested case. One commenter to the study calculated total CCB “payouts” in the first two years at roughly $75,000.
• Recommendations. The Office concluded that “there does not appear to be a need for fundamental structural reform” of eligible claims and works, the damages caps or the treatment of anonymous infringers. However, it recommended amendments to speed the process, expand the Board’s role in mediation and to allow district-court referrals for settlement, and to improve remedies and enforcement.

Key Considerations: Is the CASE Act Useful, and for Whom?

The record supports a clear-eyed answer. The CCB works—for a specific kind of claim, brought by a specific kind of claimant, against a specific kind of respondent, with realistic expectations about the outcome.

1. The Board is the right forum for small, clear, documented claims against identifiable U.S. respondents

The claims that have succeeded share a profile: a registered work, a respondent located in the United States who can be served and who has a business, a website or a storefront to lose, copying that is obvious from a screenshot, and a licensing history that supports a damages figure.

Photographers, designers, illustrators, small publishers and distributors of broadcast content fit this profile, and the determinations above show them recovering three to four times their license fee in a matter of months for a $100 filing fee. Florida’s real-estate, tourism and hospitality economies generate exactly these disputes—listing photographs reused by the next owner, restaurant broadcasts, boutique merchandise copied on Etsy—and the Board is well suited to them.

2. Expect the statutory floor unless you prove actual harm

Oppenheimer, Shocked and Papula each produced awards of $750 to $1,000 after a liability win because the claimant did not prove a license fee or lost revenue. Oakes, Hirsch and Walters produced $3,600 to $5,000 because the claimant did. Before filing, assemble the evidence: prior licenses for uses as similar as possible to the infringing use (Hirsch), a published rate card, invoices, and—where the respondent sold something—evidence of its revenue (Gervasi). A claimant who will not disclose her own financials (Papula) should not expect the Board to fill the gap.

3. Register on time, because the cap is halved if you do not

Statutory damages at the Board are $15,000 per work for works registered before infringement or within three months of publication and $7,500 otherwise. Gervasi was limited to the lower figure. The same timing rule governs statutory damages and fees in federal court. For creators with catalogs of photographs or designs, group registration is the practical answer, and it should be done routinely rather than after an infringement is found.

4. The opt-out is the Board’s structural weakness — and a fair reason to reserve the forum for respondents who will stay

About a third of respondents who are served opt out, and sophisticated or repeat infringers, and any respondent advised by counsel that the claimant is unlikely to pursue federal litigation, will often do so. The Board is therefore most useful against respondents who have an incentive to resolve the matter—legitimate businesses, individuals with reputations, parties who have already engaged with a demand letter—and least useful against anonymous sellers, offshore operators and serial infringers.

Where the claim is worth more than the cap, or where injunctive relief is essential, federal court remains the forum, and a CCB filing may simply alert the respondent.

5. Use the Board as a settlement engine

The most striking figure in the Office’s report is that nearly two-thirds of settlement conferences produced agreements and 136 proceedings settled. Armatus shows what a good outcome looks like: an admission, a takedown and $9,000, embodied in an enforceable determination. A CCB claim served on a respondent who has ignored a demand letter is frequently what brings the respondent to the table, and counsel should treat the settlement conference as the objective rather than a detour.

6. Do not bring contract disputes, weak fair use claims or complex cases

Gideons was dismissed as a contract dispute, Braun was dismissed on fair use against well-prepared respondents, and the Board’s own commentary describes it as “best configured to handle straightforward cases.” Claims that turn on the scope of a license, on ownership between collaborators, or on a plausible commentary or news-reporting defense should be evaluated with the understanding that the respondent may participate, win, and leave the claimant with a binding adverse determination.

7. Clear the compliance review the first time

Roughly fifty-seven percent of claims fail initial review, and most of those claimants give up. The Board’s compliance requirements—a registered or applied-for work, a properly identified respondent, a specific description of the infringing conduct with supporting exhibits, and a claim within the Board’s subject-matter limits—are not onerous, but they are enforced. A claim prepared with counsel, or at least reviewed against the Board’s handbook, will pass. A claim drafted from a template will often not.

Our Copyright Matters team prepares CCB claims on a fixed-fee basis for exactly this reason.

8. Plan for enforcement

A determination is not money. A claimant who obtains a default determination must still confirm it in federal court and collect on it, and the Office’s report acknowledges that this step is harder than it should be and recommends easing it. Before filing, confirm that the respondent has assets or a business that makes collection realistic, and budget for the confirmation proceeding. For respondents who participate and lose, the determination’s binding effect and the risk of a bad-faith finding—Johnson v. Sampson imposed one on counsel—are usually sufficient to secure payment.

9. The Board is a respondent’s forum too

Florida businesses that receive CCB claims should evaluate them rather than reflexively opting out. A claim with a legitimate fair use, license or ownership defense can be defeated on the merits at modest cost, as Braun shows, and a defensible position can be resolved by a settlement conference for less than the cost of responding to a federal complaint. Opting out preserves the right to federal litigation but also exposes the respondent to statutory damages up to $150,000 per work and attorney’s fees if the claimant proceeds there. Conversely, a business that receives a claim it cannot defend should consider that a $3,000 determination is a favorable outcome relative to the federal alternative.

10. Watch for the amendments

The Office’s recommended changes, including single-officer determinations, easier service, cost recovery, streamlined confirmation and expanded mediation, would address most of the practical complaints reflected in the record. If enacted, they will make the Board faster and its determinations more collectible, and will tilt the cost-benefit analysis further in favor of using it for small claims. Creators and businesses should follow the legislation, and counsel should revisit the analysis above as the rules change.

Conclusion

The Copyright Claims Board has done what it was designed to do, within the limits Congress built into it. It has given photographers, designers, writers and small distributors a forum in which a clear infringement can be adjudicated in months, for a $100 fee, with awards that—while modest—are several times the license fee the infringer avoided, and it has resolved far more disputes by settlement than by determination. It has not, and cannot, replace federal court for high-value claims, for injunctions, for anonymous or offshore infringers, or against respondents who simply decline to participate.

For Florida creators, the right approach is to treat the Board as one tool among several: register early, document licensing, use the Board for the claims that fit its profile, and preserve federal litigation for the ones that do not.

If you would like an assessment of whether a copyright dispute belongs before the Copyright Claims Board or in federal court, or assistance preparing or responding to a CCB claim, please visit our Copyright Matters and Litigation & Enforcement pages, or contact us at 305-374-8303.