Copyright infringement penalties run on two tracks. On the civil side, a court can order an infringer to pay between $750 and $30,000 per work, rising to as much as $150,000 per work when the infringement was willful, plus attorney fees and an injunction to stop the activity.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2319 – Criminal Infringement of a Copyright3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3571 – Sentence of Fine Which track applies, and where inside each range a case lands, depends on how the work was registered, how the infringer behaved, and how much money was involved.
Civil Damages
A copyright owner who wins an infringement case chooses between two ways of measuring the money owed.
The first is actual damages plus the infringer’s profits. Actual damages compensate for provable financial losses. Any profits the infringer earned get added on top, but only the portion attributable to the infringement that isn’t already counted in the owner’s losses.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits Proving these numbers takes evidence, and for many creators the losses are hard to document.
The second is statutory damages, which the statute sets between $750 and $30,000 per work infringed, at the court’s discretion. When infringement covers several works, the totals add up quickly. Two adjustments move the ceiling and floor:
- If the court finds the infringement was willful, the award can go as high as $150,000 per work.
- If the infringer convinces the court they had no reason to know their conduct was infringing, the award can drop as low as $200 per work.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits
On top of damages, courts can award attorney fees and costs to the winning side and issue injunctions permanently ordering the infringer to stop. The gap between $750 and $150,000 gives judges enormous latitude, and that uncertainty is what pushes most defendants toward settlement long before trial.
Why Registration Timing Changes the Money
Copyright exists automatically the moment a work is fixed in a lasting form, but the strongest civil remedies are gated behind registration with the Copyright Office. You cannot even file a civil infringement lawsuit for a U.S. work until the Office has processed your registration or formally refused it. A pending application isn’t enough; you need the certificate or the refusal letter in hand.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 411 – Registration and Civil Infringement Actions
Timing then decides what you can recover. If registration happens before infringement begins, or within three months of the work’s first publication, statutory damages and attorney fees are on the table. Wait past that window and register only after discovering the infringement, and you’re limited to actual damages and the infringer’s profits.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 412 – Registration as Prerequisite to Certain Remedies for Infringement Losing access to statutory damages and fees is what strips most late-registering creators of their real leverage. Online registration costs $65.6U.S. Copyright Office. Fees
The Copyright Claims Board
Federal court isn’t the only option for civil recovery. The Copyright Claims Board (CCB) is a tribunal built for smaller disputes, and it hears infringement claims, requests for a declaration of non-infringement, and disputes over DMCA takedown notices. Total recovery in a single CCB proceeding is capped at $30,000. Statutory damages are limited to $15,000 per work for timely registered works and $7,500 per work for works that were not timely registered.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 1504 – Copyright Claims Board Procedures The process is voluntary. Either side can opt out and force the case into federal court, so the CCB works best when both parties want a faster and cheaper resolution than full litigation.
Criminal Penalties
Copyright infringement becomes a federal crime when it is willful and either done for profit or committed on a significant scale. The Department of Justice generally reserves prosecution for large piracy operations rather than individual users, but the statute reaches further than that in principle.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 506 – Criminal Offenses
The heaviest penalties apply to willful infringement for commercial advantage or private financial gain. When it involves reproducing or distributing at least 10 copies with a total retail value over $2,500 within a 180-day window, the maximum sentence is five years in prison for a first offense and ten years for a repeat offense.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2319 – Criminal Infringement of a Copyright
Non-commercial infringement can also be prosecuted when the copies exceed $1,000 in retail value within a 180-day window. Penalties are lower: up to one year for cases below the $2,500 threshold, and up to three years when the value exceeds $2,500 and involves 10 or more copies.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2319 – Criminal Infringement of a Copyright Distributing a work being prepared for commercial release, meaning pre-release piracy, carries up to three years, or five years if done for commercial gain.
Fines follow the general federal sentencing framework: up to $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for organizations convicted of a felony.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3571 – Sentence of Fine Courts routinely order forfeiture of infringing copies and the equipment used to produce them.
DMCA Circumvention: A Separate Set of Penalties
Bypassing technological protections like encryption, digital rights management, or password systems triggers its own penalty structure under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Manufacturing or distributing tools primarily designed to defeat those protections is prohibited too.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 1201 – Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems
Civil statutory damages for circumvention run from $200 to $2,500 per act, separate from the standard infringement numbers above. Willful circumvention for commercial gain can bring criminal fines up to $500,000 and up to five years in prison for a first offense, doubling for repeat violations.10U.S. Copyright Office. Chapter 12: Copyright Protection and Management Systems A single course of conduct can trigger both regular infringement liability and a circumvention claim if it involves both copying protected content and defeating the protection around it.
Who Can Be Held Liable
Penalties don’t stop at the person who physically made the copy. Two forms of secondary liability reach the people and companies behind the direct infringer.
Contributory infringement applies when someone knows about the infringing activity and either encourages it or provides meaningful assistance. Selling software designed for piracy, or running a platform with knowledge that it’s mostly used for unauthorized copying, falls here. Knowledge plus material contribution is the combination.
Vicarious liability applies when a party has the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity and draws a direct financial benefit from it. Actual knowledge of specific infringing acts isn’t required.11Ninth Circuit District and Bankruptcy Courts. 17.20 Secondary Liability – Vicarious Infringement – Elements and Burden of Proof An employer whose employee infringes during work, or a venue operator whose tenants sell counterfeit goods, can face this liability. Copyright suits routinely name both the direct infringer and the entities that profited from or enabled the activity, and the damages numbers described above can attach to any of them.
How Long You Have to Act
Time limits cut off both civil and criminal cases. Civil lawsuits must be filed within three years after the claim accrues. Criminal proceedings must be brought within five years.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 507 – Limitation of Actions For civil cases, courts generally apply a discovery rule: the three-year clock starts when the owner discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, the infringement rather than when it first happened. That flexibility matters because many infringements go undetected for years, particularly online. Even with the discovery rule, delay costs something. Evidence disappears, witnesses forget, and infringing copies spread further the longer they stay up, which shrinks both the money and the leverage available when a case is finally brought.