The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently made what may have been the first U.S. federal appellate decision finding an album of music recordings to be a single work under the damages provision of the Copyright Act of 1976. In Bryant v. Media Right Productions, Inc., the court agreed with the lower court that an album is to be considered a “compilation” under the Act and, therefore, that a plaintiff is only entitled to statutory damages on a per-album basis. Specifically, the court says:

Based on a plain reading of the statute, therefore, infringement of an album should result in only one statutory damage award. The fact that each song may have received a separate copyright is irrelevant to this analysis.

The plaintiffs in this case argued that each copyrighted song constitutes a “work” under the 1972 Act, and therefore demanded statutory damages for each song contained on the two albums in the complaint. To make their argument, the plaintiffs relied heavily on decisions where other Circuits applied an “independent economic value” test to determine whether each work contained within a compilation qualifies for separate statutory damages. Here, the Second Circuit specifically rejected the “independent economic value” test and instead relied on a plain reading of the statute along with accompanying legislative commentary to hold that an album compiled by the songwriters constitutes a single work.

The Second Circuit’s reading of the compilation language of the 1976 Act may significantly reduce the value placed on album-infringement disputes by copyright holders. Whether this ruling could reach beyond the music industry to influence other decisions regarding assembling preexisting copyrighted materials into a compilation—such as bundled software packages in software copyright disputes—is an interesting question that could have broad ramifications.