Venue for Creators’ Small Copyright Claims Stirs Efficacy Debate

A nascent copyright small-claims tribunal has generated reactions ranging from praise to an unfavorable comparison to throwing money out of a helicopter.

The Copyright Claims Board, despite room for improvement, “is working well,” providing fair resolutions and driving settlements of disputes that otherwise mostly would’ve never seen a courtroom, according to a Feb. 13 report from the US Copyright Office. The report includes data on 1,700-plus claims brought since the CCB opened in June 2022 as an alternative venue for creators to pursue infringement claims without filing a federal lawsuit.

Content-industry associations praised the quality of the board’s work and its value to the copyright ecosystem after its establishment under the 2020 Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act, or CASE Act. But others questioned spending $5.4 million over the past two years to generate $75,000 in total damages awarded.

The discrepancy largely comes down to disagreement over how to value intangibles, unknown settlement figures, and shifted incentives. The Copyright Office responded to one cost-benefit criticism, saying it “fails to assign value to the CASE Act’s public service mission, the positive impact of fostering settlements between parties, and the broader societal benefit of ensuring that copyright rights have meaning.”

Use of the board appears to be increasing—2026 is on pace for more than 600 filings by June, more than 100 filings above any prior year, the report said.

The figures show growing demand for the new venue for resolving modest claims without the time and cost burdens of federal litigation, said copyright attorney Jacqueline Charlesworth of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC, who helped establish the CCB when she was general counsel at the Copyright Office. The report’s findings show accused parties’ willingness to participate, she said. Opt-outs, where a party essentially rejects the board and forces a rightsholder to sue, ended 152 cases—roughly one-third of properly served, substantively compliant claims.

“The biggest question was, ‘If we build it, will they come?’ A fair number of naysayers said everyone is going to opt out,” Charlesworth said. Without a system to address small claims, copyright “becomes a hollow right for a lot of creators” for whom litigation is impractical, she said, and the lean CCB is “one of the most efficient ways you could possibly do it. As a government entity it’s not even a drop in the bucket.”

Feedback in the report from groups including the Copyright Alliance, Motion Picture Association, and Author’s Guild generally praised the effort. But public-interest group Re:Create Coalition‘s executive director Brandon Butler said the numbers reveal weak demand, and the “board seems to be mostly churning through bogus claims.” The CCB has issued 43 final decisions—22 of them defaults where a party didn’t defend the case.

“Inefficiency is the headline,” Butler said, questioning the relatively low value of damages awarded to rightsholders while the Copyright Office spends millions “to feel good that this thing exists.”

“You can make grants to the arts and it would be a lot more efficient,” said Butler, whose organization was also critical of the concept before its launch. “You could drop money out of a helicopter.”

Seeking the Upside

A core concept is that respondents would accept the board’s authority to limit their own costs and risk in a venue designed to be pro se friendly—two-thirds of claimants and one-third of respondents appeared without counsel. Removing large attorney fees can also make smaller settlements palatable.

The report says 136 cases are known to have settled, and even more likely settled given more than 100 voluntary dismissals. The number of claims a respondent or attorney can bring are limited to prevent mass-litigation in pursuit of leveraged settlements.

Butler said during his previous time as director of information policy for the University of Virginia Library that it “took about 30 seconds” to decide to take advantage of a preemptive opt-out offered to libraries and archives. “What is the upside for a defendant to go into that venue?” he said.

But copyright attorney Steven Stein of Greenberg Glusker sees plenty of benefit for clients.

“I would very much be inclined not to opt out because the financial risk is limited,” he said. Lawsuits, especially by serial litigators, often “claim damages many multiples of what a court would award, always allege willfulness, and juice things up with attorney fees. You can’t really do that in this process.”

Streamlining to Expand

Final rulings have “received praise for their quality,” according to the report, and even Butler said he hasn’t “seen any problematic decisions on the merits.”

But the Copyright Office acknowledged areas where the process could be streamlined. While more efficient than court, the average contested proceeding took 615 days, and default cases lasted 438 days, not including any court actions to enforce CCB awards.

Some of that length is inherent to safeguards protecting due process, such as a 60-day opt-out period and 90-day service window. But clearer forms and better support could help reduce noncompliant claims and improper service, and allowing respondents to waive the 60-day window could tighten timelines, the report said. It also suggested legislation could improve efficiency by letting a single board member handle each of the mostly low-complexity cases, with the whole board handling appeals—an idea supported by Stein and Charlesworth.

But even if made more efficient, Butler doubted how much the board’s reach could expand. Key industries have already widely promoted it among their ranks, and most people probably haven’t been told that opting out is in their best interest, which would further limit case uptake, he added.

Others, though, saw plenty of room for growth. Stein suggested the courts, for example, could play a role.

“It seems like a really good way for courts to offload pending copyright litigation,” he said, adding that “so much of copyright infringement litigation is taken up by repeat offenders” who “pursue many, many claims.”