Judge Denies Punitive Damages In Viacom Vs. YouTube Case

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 […]

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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.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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