# Copyright Question: Angela M. Keyes

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copyright-question-angela-m-keyes/536694>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 20, 2010, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copyright-question-angela-m-keyes/536694 "2010-04-20T00:59:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![JpnDude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@JpnDude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JpnDude)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2010, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copyright-question-angela-m-keyes/536694/41 "2010-04-22T13:50:07Z")

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**Walloon** , thanks for that invaluable information! I’ll certainly forward that to the publisher and see if they could confirm all the info based on your cites. Thanks again to everyone!

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**Author:** ![ivn1188](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e480ec/32.png) [@ivn1188](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivn1188)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2010, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copyright-question-angela-m-keyes/536694/42 "2010-04-22T16:12:12Z")

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> [@Walloon](#):
>
> No, you do not. Under U.S. copyright law, the plaintiff can elect to sue for actual damages and profits, or statutory damages (“a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just”). [The law.](http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504) In a famous recent case, J.K. Rowling and her publisher sued the publisher of a Harry Potter encyclopedia for copyright infringement. The encyclopedia had not yet been published, so no actual damages had occurred. The court awarded the plaintiffs $750 for each of the Harry Potter books that were infringed.

Sorry, I was talking about Japanese copyright law there, which has an odd sort of statutorily defined “actual damages”. It’s something like the number of copies times the profit the publisher could have made on the infringing portion of the work.

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**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2010, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/copyright-question-angela-m-keyes/536694/43 "2010-04-22T18:54:19Z")

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A few other tidbits: Her full name was Angela Mary Keyes, and under that name she wrote a book about _[Stories and Story-Telling](http://books.google.com/books?id=s08gI1HF3ysC&source=gbs_navlinks_s)_. She taught at [Brooklyn Training School](http://www.jstor.org/pss/801333).

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