Judge Denies Punitive Damages In Viacom Vs. YouTube Case

Mar 11, 2008 at 8:54am ET by Barry Schwartz

Viacom Denied Punitive Damages In YouTube Suit from the Silicon Valley Insider reports a US District Court has denied Viacom’s request for punitive damages against Google over the YouTube copyright claims.

Judge Louis Stanton said “common-law punitive damages cannot be recovered under the Copyright Act,” and denied Viacom’s action against Google and YouTube. This does not mean Google won; far from it, in fact.

All this decision says is that Viacom cannot amend their original copyright complaint to add a claim for punitive damages. It seemed based on the decision that Google did not object to such an amendment, maybe because they knew that it might just help their defense in the long run.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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