District court confirms Cox has to pay $1bn to labels for copyright infringement

By Emmanuel Legrand

A US District Court judge in Virginia upheld a $1 billion award in the copyright infringement case against Cox Communications. 

  A court found in 2019 that the internet service provider had infringed copyrights owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group and had “knowingly contributed to, and reaped substantial profits from, massive copyright infringement committed by thousands of its subscribers.” 

  The jury ordered in December 2019 Cox to pay the record labels over $99,000 for each of the 10,017 works that were infringed. The decision was challenged by Cox, and in June 2020 a judge accepted that the determination of 10,017 works may have been "premature" when Cox conceded to 7,579 infringed works. 

  The court gave defendant three months to provide evidence. However, in its January ruling, Judge Liam O'Grady wrote that "the court finds that the jury’s determination of the number of works infringed stands. Cox’s failure to present evidence of its own calculation to the jury at trial is determinative.”