Poet Wins $5,000 in Case Over Infringing Blankets

Earlier today, the Copyright Claims Board (CCB) issued another final determination. This one is in case 24-CCB-0035, Helen Walters v. Ideasgreatest LLC.

The case was filed by Helen Walters, a UK-based poet and greeting card designer who found one of her works being sold on blankets. After she filed a takedown notice against the product, Ideasgreatest filed a counternotice.

Though the case is another default determination, meaning that the respondent did not participate in it, the board did comprehensively examine the facts and provided some more clues about how it will rule in future cases.

More importantly, the case provides guidance on the benefits and risks of using the CCB’s “Smaller Claims” feature. While it can and does speed the process up and make it less expensive, it can also severely limit the damages one can collect.

In this case, the claimant may have been better off not going through the smaller claims process. Since they did, their damages were capped at $5,000. However, with the regular track, they might have been able to receive much more.

That said, given the challenges in collecting on this judgment, it may still have been the correct move. 

Either way, this is an interesting case that is worth examining. 

Background of the Case

Walters filed the original claim in February 2024. The claims are relatively straightforward. 

Helen Walters is a UK resident who is a poet and greeting card designer. She authored the poem You Held Me Close, which she has sold on greeting cards and licensed to others.

She learned of a company, Interestpod, which was selling blankets with the poem as part of the design. According to Walters, the only difference was that the company changed the word “mum” to “mom” for the US market.

She filed a DMCA takedown notice against the product listing with Shopify, but a representative for the company filed a counternotice.

On the same day the counternotice was filed, Walters filed the claim with the CCB. She claimed that the blankets were infringing the copyright of her poem and that she had a valid registration for it.

The CCB initially rejected the claim. The contact information in the counter-notice pointed to a Vietnamese resident. The board asked for clarification since the CCB can only hear cases involving US-based respondents.

She clarified that she was filing the claim against the LLC, Ideasgreatest, which was incorporated in the United States and operated in the country. As such, the board allowed the case to move forward.

Ideasgreatest never responded to the claim despite being served with the paperwork. As a result, the case moved toward a default determination, which was granted in favor of Walters. 

After reviewing a past license Walters provided, the board granted her the maximum damages it can award in a smaller claims case: $5,000. However, the damages likely weren’t the point of this particular claim. 

The most important element is that the infringing work has not been restored.

CCB and the DMCA

One of the more interesting elements of this case is that Walters filed it the same day she received the counternotice from Ideasgreatest. The goal was obvious: To prevent the work from being restored.

On that note, it seems to have worked. Though the company has a similar blanket for sale, it uses a different poem. The infringing blanket(s) is still not available.

I’ve talked before about using the CCB to counter counternotices. When confronted with a DMCA counternotice, creators are often unable to respond. Though they have 10 days to file a lawsuit, that is often impractical or impossible. The CCB, at least in theory, provides an alternative approach.

However, we haven’t seen it in action. Here, the infringing work was not restored, likely due to the CCB filing. In short, the system worked. Even if Walters cannot collect damages, the infringing material remains offline.

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Smaller Claims

Walters filed the case using the “smaller claims” track. This limited the damages she could be awarded to $5,000 but also meant that the process would be streamlined and that the case would be heard by just one officer instead of three.

In some ways, this was a smashing success. Even with the need to file an amended claim and the delays caused by the default, the case took just 10 months. While that is still not lightning fast, most CCB cases take well over a year, and federal court cases can take many years before they get to a trial. 

In short, this is likely the fastest way to resolve such a dispute by a wide margin.

However, the cap on damages may have harmed Walters. Given the nature of the infringement, if her goal is to collect the damages, she limited herself significantly. She easily could have won many times more.

This reason is because of how the CCB calculates statutory damages. 

Calculating Damages

As we’ve discussed before, the CCB typically calculates damages by examining the cost of a typical license and multiplying it by three. Though there are exceptions, that’s largely the formula they have followed.

Here, that didn’t happen.

Walters presented a license for the poem, for which someone paid £1,500 to use it for one year on jewelry. Walters translated that to $2,008. However, the CCB looked at the historical value of the GBP and found that the actual amount was close to $1,850 at the time the license was purchased.

Given that the site had used the poem for an estimated four years (though it could not be proven), the potential license costs range between $1,850 and $7,400. Multiply those by three, and the total rises to between $5,550 and $22,200. The entire range is above the $5,000 maximum.

As a result, Walters could have been awarded more damages, possibly significantly more damages, if the case had been on the regular track. However, as I said above, that likely wasn’t the motivation behind filing the case.

International Issues

The final thing that makes this case unique is that it nearly didn’t make it past the claim filing. The counternotice Walters was responding to was filed by someone using information from Vietnam. 

The board asked Walters to clarify whether the respondent was proper. This could have been the end of the case (and has been for many others), but she responded with evidence that the LLC itself was based in the United States.

More than just providing the LLC information, she pointed out that the company ships from the United States, has a US address, their terms of service are under US jurisdiction and other details about the company.

With that cleared up, the case moved forward solely targeting the LLC.

Bottom Line

When I first read the final determination, I was ready to believe that Walters had made a grave error using the smaller claims track and that she had left significant damages on the table.

However, after learning more about the facts of the case, I’m not convinced this was the case.

Though the LLC is in the United States, the individuals behind it are most likely based in Vietnam. Collecting any amount of statutory damages will likely be difficult. As such, it doesn’t matter if the damages are $5,000 or $22,200. 

Though Walters didn’t save any money going this route, it significantly streamlined the case and made the process less burdensome for her. Given that this would likely never pay for itself, that was probably worth it.

Since this case was filed on the same day she received the counternotice, the intent is clear. She wanted to prevent the work from being restored, and it appears it worked.

So, while the damages may not be as high as they could have been, she likely got what she wanted most.