Prof. Cotter Cited in Ninth Circuit Opinion

On September 26, 2016 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit published an opinion citing a 1998 paper coauthored by Professor Thomas Cotter and Roger Blair titled, "An Economic Analysis of Damages Rules in Intellectual Property Law."  The opinion, Sicre de Fontbrune v. Wofsy, addresses the question of whether a French judicial order known as an astreinte is enforceable in the United States under the Uniform Foreign-Court Monetary Judgment Recognition Act. In reversing a district court opinion that had answered this question in the negative, the opinion draws an analogy between the astreinte at issue in this case and statutory damages for copyright infringement under U.S. law, and cites the Blair & Cotter article for the proposition that statutory damages "are intended to induce copyright holders to enforce their copyrights and to deter infringers by preventing unjust enichment, even where actual damages are unproved."