May 22, 2017
STEPABLES Wins Copyright Infringement Lawsuit, Defendant Plans Appeal

This month a jury in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland awarded STEPABLES-owner Under A Foot Plant Co. $900,000 in actual damages for The Perennial Farm’s unauthorized use of STEPABLES’s copyrighted photographs. The jury also awarded Under A Foot Plant Co. the maximum available statutory damages of $300,000 for The Perennial Farm’s willful infringement STEPABLES’s brochure and website.

The attorney for the defendant in the case said in an email that “the jury’s damages verdict is not only absurd, but contrary to the law,” and its client, Exterior Design Inc., “intends to explore all avenues of post-verdict relief, including an appeal.”

Company president Frances White is the creator of the STEPABLES plant line and its many copyrighted images. In the lawsuit, Under A Foot Plant Co. and White alleged that The Perennial Farm had used STEPABLES’s copyrighted photographs to market a competing line of products called “Treadwell.” White testified at trial that she had discovered her pictures on Treadwell webpages, brochures, and posters in 2011, 2012 and 2014, and these infringements continue.

Professor Jeffrey Sedlik, a leading expert on visual arts and photography licensing, was called as an expert witness at trial. Professor Sedlik testified that The Perennial Farm had infringed 23 of Stepables’s photographs a total of 133 times from 2011 to 2017. He confirmed the infringement using a fingerprint-like “feature point analysis” of the photographs and then researched the fair market value for licensing similar images in similar marketing materials. Professor Sedlik noted that the use of these photographs in competing marketing materials increased the likely cost of a license drastically, thus increasing the damages sustained by Under A Foot Plant, Co.

For more information, visit www.stepables.com.