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Firm Awarded Over $700K in Fees in Willful Infringement Case

June 8, 2011 | Posted in : Expenses / Costs, Fee Award, Fee Award Factors, Fee Request, Hourly Rates

A recent NLJ story, “Management Training Company Awarded Over $700K in Fees, Costs in Copyright Case” reports that a Boston federal judge has awarded Situation Management Inc. nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to cover attorney fees and costs after ruling that ASP Consulting willfully infringed its copyrights in training manuals.  In his June 6 order in Situation Management Systems Inc. v. ASP Consulting Group, Judge Richard Stearns of the District of Massachusetts awarded Situation Management Systems, a management training company, $718,015 in attorney fees and expenses and $25,733 in costs. 

Situation Management Systems sued ASP, an Austrian consulting company, in September 2006 for infringing its copyrights in training manuals on such topics as negotiation and promoting and implementing innovation.  Stearns found that ASP had engaged in substantial and willful copying of the manuals, and thus had infringed the copyrights at issue.  Stearns also enjoined ASP from any further infringement of Systems Management Systems’ copyrighted work and allowed the company to submit its application for attorney fees and costs within 30 days. 

In his ruling, Stearns noted that he considered several factors, including the plaintiff’s attorneys’ experience; the rates in light of the cost of similar intellectual property litigation in the Boston area; the number of hours spent on the two trials and an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit; and the measure of success.