IP Services
Copyright Matters
Copyright Registration, Enforcement & Defense — Florida
A copyright is the set of exclusive rights granted to the author of an original work of authorship — the right to copy, distribute, perform, display, and adapt the work. Rooted in the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution, copyright protection is remarkably long-lasting: generally the author’s life plus 70 years, or 95 years from first publication (120 years from creation, whichever is shorter) for works made for hire. Few forms of intellectual property protection last as long, or cover as broad a range of creative work.
Our Miami copyright attorneys prepare and prosecute applications before the U.S. Copyright Office, litigate infringement claims in Florida’s federal courts and before the Copyright Claims Board, and defend businesses targeted by high-volume copyright plaintiffs.
Why Registration Matters, Even Though Copyright Doesn’t Require It
Protection attaches automatically; enforcement does not
Copyright protection attaches to a work the moment it is fixed in a tangible medium, whether or not the owner ever registers it with the U.S. Copyright Office. But registration unlocks the practical tools that make a copyright enforceable, and the timing of that registration determines how strong those tools are.
- Registration is a lawsuit prerequisite. Under 17 U.S.C. § 411(a), a copyright owner generally cannot file an infringement suit until the Copyright Office has acted on the application — not merely filed it. The Supreme Court confirmed this in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC (2019), resolving a circuit split in favor of requiring registration (or a refusal) before suit.
- Early registration creates a presumption of validity. Registering within 5 years of first publication entitles the owner to a legal presumption that the copyright is valid and that the facts in the registration are accurate.
- Timely registration unlocks statutory damages and fees. Registering within 3 months of first publication, or before the infringement begins, entitles the owner to elect statutory damages (up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement) and to recover attorney’s fees — remedies otherwise unavailable.
Registration itself is inexpensive relative to the protection it unlocks, which is why it’s advisable to register any work of real value promptly rather than waiting until an infringement is discovered.
Preparing and Filing a Copyright Application
Three components, and a set of details that has to be right
An application to register a work may be filed at any time during the life of the copyright, but a complete, accurate application the first time avoids delay, correspondence from the Office, and — in a later infringement suit — a fight over whether the registration itself is valid. Every application before the U.S. Copyright Office consists of the same three components:
What a Complete Application Requires — 17 U.S.C. § 409; 37 C.F.R. § 202
A completed application identifying the claimant(s) and author(s); whether the work is a “work made for hire”; the title of the work; the year of completion; the nation and date of first publication (if published); and the nature of authorship being claimed.
A deposit copy of the work, in the format the Office requires for that class of work — generally one complete copy for an unpublished work, or two copies of the “best edition” for a published work.
The filing fee, which varies by application type.
Registration today is handled almost entirely through the Copyright Office’s electronic registration system, which routes an application to the correct examining division based on the type of work claimed — literary works, visual arts, performing arts, sound recordings, and serials. The Office’s legacy paper forms (TX, VA, PA, SR, SE, and GATT/DN) still exist for special circumstances, but electronic filing is the standard path for nearly every application we prepare.
Special deposit rules for software
Computer programs receive their own deposit treatment. For a program of 50 pages or more, the standard deposit is the first and last 25 pages of source code; for a shorter program, the deposit is the entire source code. Where the source code contains trade secret material, the Office’s regulations permit specific pages or blocks of code to be blocked out.
Group registration and timing strategy
For clients who create many works on a regular cadence — photographers, marketing teams, software developers pushing frequent releases — the Office’s group registration options can register dozens of works in a single application, which matters directly to the timely-registration incentives discussed above.
Our copyright team selects the right application type, drafts the authorship and publication statements accurately, and manages the deposit — including the trade-secret redaction process for software — so the registration that issues actually withstands scrutiny if it’s ever litigated.
The Copyright Claims Board & the CASE Act of 2020
A small-claims alternative to federal court, with real trade-offs
The Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2020 (the “CASE Act”), enacted as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, created the Copyright Claims Board (CCB) — a three-officer tribunal housed within the U.S. Copyright Office that began hearing cases in June 2022.
What the CCB Can Hear — 17 U.S.C. §§ 1501–1511
Claims of copyright infringement;
Claims seeking a declaration of non-infringement; and
Claims of misrepresentation under the DMCA’s takedown-notice provision, 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).
Total damages in a single CCB proceeding are capped at $30,000, with statutory damages further capped at $15,000 per work if timely registered, or $7,500 per work (up to $15,000 total) if not. A separate “smaller claims” track handles claims under $5,000 with an even lighter process.
Critically, the CCB is opt-out, not opt-in, for respondents: once served with a CCB claim, a respondent has 60 days to file an opt-out notice. Opting out sends the claimant back to federal court if they want to pursue the claim at all — and failing to opt out means proceeding before the CCB and giving up the right to a jury trial for that dispute.
| Copyright Claims Board | Federal District Court | |
|---|---|---|
| Damages cap | $30,000 total per proceeding ($15,000/work statutory if timely registered) | No cap beyond the statutory range — up to $150,000/work for willful infringement, or actual damages/profits |
| Discovery | Limited “standard discovery” — interrogatories, document requests, admissions; depositions only in exceptional cases | Full civil discovery, including depositions |
| Attorney required | No — parties frequently proceed pro se | Not required, but strongly advisable given the stakes and procedure |
| Right to a jury trial | Waived for claims heard by the CCB | Preserved |
| Participation | Opt-out — respondent has 60 days to decline and force the claim to federal court | Mandatory once properly served, subject to jurisdiction/venue challenges |
| Appeal | Very limited — reconsideration, Copyright Office review, and narrow district court review for fraud or misconduct | Standard appellate review by the circuit court of appeals |
The CCB has become directly relevant to the serial-plaintiff litigation discussed below: because many single-photograph or single-video demands seek amounts well within the CCB’s $30,000 cap, some claimants now file there instead of federal court.
Generative AI, Software & Emerging Copyrightable Subject Matter
Human authorship remains the line — but where AI assistance crosses it is still being litigated
The human authorship requirement
The Copyright Office has long taken the position that copyright protects only works of human authorship, and the courts have upheld it. In Thaler v. Perlmutter, the D.C. Circuit affirmed the Office’s refusal to register a work whose applicant claimed an AI system as the sole author, and the Supreme Court denied certiorari in March 2026. The Office’s Zarya of the Dawn decision applied the same principle to a hybrid work: the Office registered the human-authored text and the creative selection and arrangement of AI-generated images, but not the AI-generated images themselves.
The Office’s March 2023 policy statement on works containing AI-generated material requires applicants to disclose AI-generated content and disclaim the unprotectable portions. Whether a given AI-assisted work qualifies for protection turns on how much creative control a human exercised over the work’s expressive elements — typing a text prompt generally isn’t sufficient control over the specific output, while substantial human selection, arrangement, and modification of AI-generated elements can support a registrable claim.
Software as a literary work
Computer programs are protected as literary works under 17 U.S.C. § 101, covering both source code and object code, bounded by the idea/expression dichotomy and merger doctrine. Section 117 gives the owner of a lawfully made copy the right to make an adaptation or backup copy necessary to use the program. In Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., the Supreme Court found Google’s use of Java API declaring code to be fair use without resolving the broader copyrightability question, leaving substantial uncertainty about how far copyright protection extends into functional interface elements.
AI training data: an unsettled, actively litigated question
2025 produced conflicting signals on whether training a generative AI model on copyrighted works is fair use. In Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence, a Delaware federal court held that Westlaw’s headnotes and Key Number system were protectable and that training a competing legal-research AI on them was not fair use — a ruling now on appeal to the Third Circuit. Weeks later, in Bartz v. Anthropic, a California federal court found that training on lawfully purchased books was fair use, while separately finding that retaining a permanent library built from pirated copies was not — a distinction that led to a proposed class settlement exceeding $1.5 billion. A companion ruling in Kadrey v. Meta reached a similar fair-use result on different facts days later.
These rulings are not uniform, several remain on appeal, and none binds courts outside their own districts — so any client training AI systems on copyrighted content, or licensing content for AI training, should treat this as a genuinely unsettled area rather than a resolved one.
Copyright Ownership, Assignments & Licensing
Registering the work is only half the job
Copyright is personal property, subject to the same general principles that govern the ownership, inheritance, and transfer of any other property right, and any of a copyright’s exclusive rights — or any subdivision of those rights — may be transferred separately. A transfer of an exclusive right isn’t valid unless it’s in writing and signed by the rights owner; a nonexclusive license doesn’t require a written agreement, though we still recommend one.
Most transfers take one of two forms. An assignment functions like a sale of personal property — the original owner transfers its rights outright. A license lets the copyright owner retain ownership while authorizing a third party to exercise some or all of those rights; a typical software license agreement is exactly this kind of copyright license.
We handle both sides of these transactions: drafting and negotiating assignments, licenses, and work-for-hire and employment-agreement language that properly vests ownership in the entity that’s supposed to own it, and registering the resulting works once ownership is clear.
Copyright Enforcement: Elements, Defenses & Remedies
What it takes to prove infringement, and what defeats it
Copyright infringement is the violation of any of a copyright owner’s exclusive rights. Proving it requires three things: a valid copyright, access to the copyrighted work by the alleged infringer, and copying that falls outside a recognized exception such as fair use.
| Common Defense | What It Requires |
|---|---|
| Fair use | A case-by-case balancing of purpose and character of the use, the nature of the work, the amount used, and the effect on the market for the original |
| Independent creation | Evidence the defendant did not copy from the plaintiff’s work, even if the two works are similar |
| License | Proof of an express or implied license authorizing the specific use |
| Public domain | The work is no longer protected by copyright |
| Non-copyrightable material | What was used is an unprotectable fact, idea, or functional element rather than protectable expression |
| Statute of limitations | The claim was not brought within 3 years of when the infringement was, or reasonably should have been, discovered |
Remedies available to a prevailing copyright owner can include actual damages and the infringer’s profits, or statutory damages ranging from $200 to $150,000 per work depending on willfulness, attorney’s fees and costs, injunctive relief, impoundment of infringing copies, and — in certain willful, commercial-scale counterfeiting scenarios — criminal exposure.
We help clients evaluate a potential infringement claim from either side: whether the elements are actually met, whether a defense applies, and what a claim is realistically worth — then carry that evaluation through pleadings, discovery, expert testimony, and trial if the matter doesn’t resolve first.
Defending Against Serial Copyright Litigation in Florida’s Federal Courts
What to do when a demand letter or complaint arrives from a high-volume plaintiff? Call us.
Florida’s Southern and Middle District federal courts have become two of the most active venues in the country for a distinct category of copyright litigation: single-photograph or single-video infringement claims brought by a small number of plaintiffs who file dozens, or in some cases hundreds, of substantially similar suits each year. These plaintiffs generally hold valid copyright registrations and are not doing anything unlawful by enforcing them — but the volume of filings, the templated demand letters, and a settlement-driven business model have led courts, commentators, and the businesses on the receiving end to describe the practice informally as “copyright trolling.”
Plaintiffs frequently seen in Florida federal court dockets
Affordable Aerial Photography, Inc. (AAP)
A South Florida aerial real-estate photography company that has filed well over 100 copyright suits in the Southern District of Florida since 2020 — mostly against real estate brokerages, agencies, and related businesses that used a listing photo without a license.
Prepared Food Photos, Inc. (f/k/a AdLife Marketing & Communications Co.)
A food-photography licensing company that relocated to Florida and changed its name in 2021, filing dozens of suits in the Middle District of Florida. The volume of related filings led the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to consolidate a group of these cases into MDL No. 3075 in the Middle District of Florida in 2023.
Ramales Photography, LLC & Global Weather Productions, LLC
Plaintiffs licensing storm, weather, and news-event photography and video, both active in Florida’s federal courts since 2025–2026 — typically against media companies and businesses that reposted storm-damage footage without a license.
Blaine Harrington III (and his estate)
A Denver-based travel photographer who filed more than 100 infringement suits nationally since 2017, including numerous Southern District of Florida actions against hotels, resorts, and travel-related businesses; suits are now being pursued by his estate.
Our team of copyright attorneys has considerable experience in defending claims brought by these types of copyright owners and related claims.
Defenses and strategic considerations
What We Evaluate First
- Verify the registration — confirm a valid registration actually predates the suit, and check whether it was timely under the registration discussion above.
- Statute of limitations — a claim must be brought within 3 years of when the infringement was, or reasonably should have been, discovered.
- License defense — many predecessor businesses previously sold stock or subscription access to the same images, meaning a defendant may already hold an undocumented valid license.
- Fair use and other substantive defenses, evaluated the same way as in any infringement matter.
- Damages theory — in Affordable Aerial Photography, Inc. v. Property Matters USA, LLC (2024), the Eleventh Circuit held a defendant is not automatically a “prevailing party” entitled to fees under § 505 merely because the plaintiff voluntarily dismisses the case.
- The Copyright Claims Board — many of these claims fall within the CCB’s $30,000 cap discussed above, triggering the 60-day opt-out decision discussed above.
Being named in one of these suits, or receiving a demand letter that references one of these plaintiffs, doesn’t mean the claim is without merit — some uses genuinely are unlicensed infringements, and these plaintiffs are entitled to enforce valid registrations. But the pattern-based nature of this litigation means a fast, informed response — checking the registration, the timeline, and any license history before reacting to a settlement number — regularly produces a far better outcome than paying the first demand.
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