I wonder how one prices out a worldwide license like this. Obviously if she put the prices at $1000/use, neither would Disney pay it nor would she recover that much from a court. But it's worth more than $0.01/use as well.
$25k per copy, by my reckoning. I mean, seriously, if it flies in court for them, why not for her? She should/could push for ten figures of punitive damages.
I don't think the MPAA gets punitive damages except for willful infringement. It's going to be hard to prove that this case with Disney -- it may be that nobody in Disney's employ even knows that this image is someone else's, if the work was done on contract. And it's going to be hard to make the case of economic harm, since the artist was not selling her work in the market otherwise.
Wouldn't the same logic follow though if someone agreed to turn off their file sharing and/or delete the files they downloaded? The MPAA/RIAA doesn't seem to be ok with that.
It's not my field, but by "worldwide license" I meant a single lump sum that covers everything they might want to do or already have done -- i.e. "this is the amount that you can pay to make this go away and avoid bringing in your expensive legal team".
My naive guess would be that somewhere USD $5k-$10k is that amount: small enough to be within budgetary authority, large enough to make it worth the artist's time to chase up.
In reality, I'd suspect and hope that the artist already has an e-mail from Disney's brand protection team, or whatever they call it, with an apology and an offer to pay immediately. Disney's surely one of the most brand-conscious companies in the world.
IMHO this looks like a substantial infringement, and $5-10K is peanuts. The signing authority of a middle manager would not factor into a settlement demand whatsoever, if it were me.
Some subscribe to the view that infringement is stealing, and that when you're caught stealing you shouldn't be afforded an opportunity to simply pay the fair market price.
I would guess the fair price would be: 1) typical licence for image on a global website, and 2) some percentage of sales of that particular bag.
I concur with others that have suggested just contacting Disney's Consumer Products division directly. I am sure they would want to fairly compensate the artist for her work.
They will also want to reprimand the company from which they sourced the bag.
Why would a fair price be relevant? I assume that statutory damages for copyright infringement would be far, far more than a fair price for the work if negotiated up-front. In other words, a retrospective license to cure infringement should probably be a bit "unfair".
Normally a price is decided upon before the use of the image. In this case, they have used the image without the permission of the owner. Kind of tough for them really - they should have gotten permission first.
