Pearson Education, Inc. v. Doe 1
- Ronnie Abrams
- 1:19-cv-07642
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Pearson Education v. Doe 1, Judge Abrams set damages against defaulting defendants for selling counterfeit books.
The plaintiffs received statutory damages against ABC Books LLC, Fidaa Hashemi, Bronislav Teplitskiy, Challenge Book Store Pvt. Ltd., Ranjan Kumar Behera, Maylourd Ascrate, Soarbh Gupta, Madhu Gupta, and Geoffrey Labos. The court rescinded the damages award against Leonard Johnson after the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims against him.
What happened
In Pearson Education, Inc. v. Doe 1, the court had already entered default judgment for the plaintiffs against several defendants and reserved the amount of damages. The defendants did not respond to the amended complaint or comply with expedited information-gathering orders, limiting the plaintiffs’ ability to determine the full extent of the sales and profits.
The court found that Labos and Soarbh Gupta deliberately violated earlier restrictions against selling counterfeit books. It ordered Labos and the Guptas to pay $100,000 and $150,000, respectively, for each counterfeit book sold, and ordered the remaining defendants to pay $30,000 per book. The court also rescinded the damages award against Leonard Johnson because the plaintiffs had voluntarily dismissed their claims against him.
Judge Ronnie Abrams entered total awards ranging from $90,000 to $600,000 against the specified defendants, terminated the pending motion, and closed the case.
The detailed version
- Pearson Education, Inc. v. Doe 1 · No. 1:19-cv-07642
- Ronnie Abrams
- Apr. 22, 2021
Background
The plaintiffs sued several defendants over the sale of counterfeit books. On November 23, 2020, the court entered default judgment against ABC Books LLC, Fidaa Hashemi, Leonard Johnson, Bronislav Teplitskiy, Challenge Book Store Pvt. Ltd., Ranjan Kumar Behera, Geoffrey Labos, Maylourd Ascrate, Soarbh Gupta, and Madhu Gupta, collectively called the Defaulting Defendants. The court had reserved the question of damages.
The opinion states that Labos sold six counterfeit books despite being subject to a permanent injunction in another case that prohibited him from selling counterfeit books. Soarbh Gupta sold four counterfeit textbooks despite an earlier settlement containing an injunction against such sales. Hashemi, through ABC Books LLC, sold eleven counterfeit books; Behera, through Challenge Book Store Pvt. Ltd., sold thirteen; Teplitskiy sold eight; and Ascrate sold three. The defendants did not answer the amended complaint or comply with the court’s expedited information-gathering order, preventing the plaintiffs from inspecting their inventory or identifying the sources of the books.
Legal Standard and Analysis
The Copyright Act and the Lanham Act allow courts to award statutory damages for copyright and trademark violations. For willful, meaning deliberate, infringement, the statutes permit higher awards. In setting statutory damages, courts may consider factors such as saved expenses, profits, lost revenue, deterrence, cooperation, and whether the conduct was innocent or willful.
The court found the evidence sufficient to determine that Labos and Soarbh Gupta acted willfully. Their prior injunctions or settlement obligations specifically restricted the conduct at issue. The court found the evidence insufficient to determine that Hashemi, ABC Books, Behera, or Challenge Book Store acted willfully merely because they were allegedly affiliated with other alleged infringers. The opinion also states that plaintiffs did not appear to claim that Teplitskiy or Ascrate acted willfully.
The plaintiffs sought damages under either the trademark or copyright laws for each counterfeit book, but not both. Because the court awarded the same amount per violation under either law, it did not identify which individual books received copyright damages and which received trademark damages.
Disposition
The court ordered the following damages:
- ABC Books LLC and Hashemi together: $330,000, based on eleven books at $30,000 per violation. - Teplitskiy: $240,000, based on eight books at $30,000 per violation. - Challenge Book Store Pvt. Ltd. and Behera together: $390,000, based on thirteen books at $30,000 per violation. - Ascrate: $90,000, based on three books at $30,000 per violation. - Soarbh and Madhu Gupta together: $600,000, based on four books at $150,000 per violation. - Labos: $600,000, based on six books at $100,000 per violation.
The court rescinded its earlier damages order as to Johnson because the plaintiffs had voluntarily dismissed their claims against him. Judge Ronnie Abrams directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion at docket entry 159 and close the case.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.