Re: personal liability for copyright infringement

On Thu, 9 Oct 1997, Mark Lemley <mlemley[_at_]mail.law.utexas.edu> wrote:
>
> Is there any set of circumstances under which a corporate officer can
> be held personally liable for acts of copyright infringement by the
> corporation, *without* piercing the corporate veil?

I think you have a couple of things confused. Piercing the veil means getting at the shareholders for the liability. If the officer is both officer and shareholder, holding him/her liable as an officer does not pierce the veil.

As for the liability itself, I see no reason why not. In the environmental area, there have been several prosecutions of corporate officers on a "knew or should have known" basis in which they were not only convicted, but the convictions upheld. One went, if I remember correctly, to the Supreme Court. Sorry I can't remember the case.

I don't have the time to make a detailed comparison of the wording of the statutes, though, but this would be one starting point. I'm sure there are others.

The trick, of course, is getting prosecution. It's not likely to be high on the list of priorities given such demands on time as drug cases.

Harold Federow
<hfederow[_at_]u.washington.edu> Received on Fri Oct 10 1997 - 16:33:18 GMT