defendants’ servers, users were required to register for an account with UMaple and obtain a
copy of the defendants’ modified version of the MapleStory client (called “UMaple Launcher”),
which bypassed the plaintiff’s technical protection measures restricting access to MapleStory.^1412
Upon a default judgment against the defendants, the court considered the statutory damages
award that the plaintiff was entitled to for violations of Section 1201 by trafficking in the
UMaple Launcher. The court concluded that, because each UMaple member necessarily
downloaded a copy of the UMaple Launcher, the number of UMaple members (17,938) was a
reasonable approximation of the minimum number of DMCA trafficking violations the
defendants had committed. The plaintiff sought the maximum amount of statutory damages, but
the court rejected that request, observing from other reported cases that courts tend to award the
statutory maximum only where doing so would not create a significant windfall for the plaintiff.
Accordingly, the court chose the minimum statutory damages amount of $200 per violation, and
awarded statutory damages in the total amount of $200 x 17,938 = $3,587,600.^1413
(vi) Point 4 Data Corp. v. Tri-State Surgical SupplyIn this case, the plaintiff Point 4 Data Corp. (Point 4), a distributor of a medical supply
software system called Genesys, licensed the defendant Tri-State to use Genesys and a computer
development platform called UniBasic on which Genesys operated. Because the
Genesys/UniBasic system repeatedly crashed, Tri-State began looking for a longer term solution
to ensure that the system could operate following a server crash. Point 4 offered to upgrade Tri-
State with the latest version of UniBasic and Genesys for $32,637, but Tri-State declined the
offer and hired some consultants to repair the problem. The consultants loaded a copy of the
Genesys/UniBasic system onto a spare computer and modified the UniBasic code in a way that
bypassed the Genesys/UniBasic security system known as the Passport Licensing Security
Software (Passport). Passport functioned to confirm that the computer user was running a proper
and authenticated version of UniBasic and extracted information from a dongle concerning the
number of authorized users. In the event there were licensing violations, such as an unauthorized
number of users, Passport would display an error message and UniBasic would terminate
execution. The modifications made by the consultants were such that each time a person logged
on to UniBasic or Genesys, a script would run that bypassed Passport and its various checks.^1414
A magistrate judge recommended a ruling that the bypassing of the Passport security
system violated Section 1201. The plaintiffs sought both disgorgement of the defendants’ profits
and statutory damages. With respect to disgorgement under Section 1203(c)(2), which allows
recovery of “any profits of the violator that are attributable to the violation and are not taken into
account in computing the actual damages,” the plaintiffs argued that, because Tri-State used the
software in its daily business of selling medical supplies and surgical equipment, the entire
amount of profits Tri-State earned in its business should be attributable to the software and, by
(^1412) Nexon American Inc. v. Kumar, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47294 at 3-4, 15 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 3, 2012).
(^1413) Id. at 15-20.
(^1414) Point 4 Data Corp. v. Tri-State Surgical Supply & Equipment, Ltd., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 113791 at *3- 10
(E.D.N.Y. June 13, 2012).