Copyright infringement; Whether plaintiff had a valid copyright in the car dealer loyalty program certificates at issue; Infringement; Calculation of the amount of profits for disgorgement; Statutory attorney fees; 17 USC § 505

The court held that the car dealer loyalty program certificates at issue constituted an “original expression” entitled to copyright protection, and that defendant-Allegiance violated plaintiff-Premier’s copyright by incorporating Premier’s material into Allegiance’s own certificates. The parties each operate car-dealership loyalty programs that provide services for cars after they are sold. The terms and conditions of the programs are provided to the customers on “loyalty certificates.” Allegiance got the account of a former Premier client, and “incorporated Premier’s Lifetime Powertrain Loyalty Program certificates into its own plan.” Premier had obtained a copyright for its certificate. Premier sued Allegiance for infringing on its copyrighted certificates. The district court found for Premier and ordered Allegiance to disgorge any profits obtained from using this material ($441,239). It also awarded Premier $577,736 in attorney fees. On appeal, Allegiance challenged the “originality” of Premier’s copyright. The court explained that copyright laws “protect all manner of works—mundane and lofty, commercial and non-commercial, even the dull and workaday—so long as they satisfy the modest imperatives of originality.” It rejected Allegiance’s challenge to the originality of Premier’s copyright and held that Premier had a valid copyright. The loyalty certificates were original to the author “because Premier designed them ‘in-house’ and ‘independent of forms used by competitors[.]’” Further, they presumptively possessed “a ‘minimal creative spark,’ . . . by showing some ‘inventiveness and imagination[.]’” The court noted that the copyright covered “a particular auto maintenance program, the customized expression and organization of which places the certificates beyond the kinds of highly abstracted descriptions typical of uncopyrightable facts and ideas. . . . The run-of-the-mine subject matter of the certificates does not detract from Premier’s creative choices in crafting them.” The court upheld the district court’s disgorgement award where “Premier satisfied its burden of establishing that Allegiance’s revenues reasonably relate to its use of the certificate.” It also upheld the award of statutory attorney fees. Affirmed.