Punitive damages may be available in copyright infringement actions under the U.S. Copyright Act

In a prior post, we noted a case where Viacom was denied punitive damages under the copyright act. A law review article by Marketa Trimble makes the claim that the copyright act does not bar punitive damages simply because it does not affirmatively provide for them. The article also discusses cases in the Southern District of New York which suggest that plaintiffs may elect punitive damages under the act, and which differ from the Viacom ruling we discussed in our prior post.