Viacom Inc loses copyright infringement suit against Google Inc

Last week U.S. District Court decided in favor of Google Inc. that was accused by Viacom Inc. of copyright infringement.

Photo: Viacom Inc loses copyright infringement suit against Google Inc

The judge ruled that Viacom Inc. may claim statutory damages of not more than $750 - $30,000 for each infringement, or up to $150,000 in the case of "willful" infringement.

In February 2007, Viacom sent upwards of 100,000 DMCA takedown notices to the video-sharing site YouTube, alleging large-scale copyright infringement.

On March 13, 2007, Viacom filed a US $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube alleging massive copyright infringement, alleging that users frequently uploaded copyrighted material to YouTube - enough to cause a hit in revenue for Viacom and a gain in advertisement revenue for YouTube.

The complaint contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Photo: www.jeffpidgeon.com