Copyright Victor Asks Supreme Court For Legal Fees

Thai student Supap Kirtsaeng already won a major Supreme Court copyright case in October 2012, when the Court found his practice of selling imported textbooks did not violate the Copyright Act. But this week Kirtsaeng is back before the Court, asking for more than $2 million in legal fees from John Wiley & Sons, the publisher that sued him. Under the Copyright Act, judges may “award a reasonable attorney’s fee to the prevailing party.” The case cast light on the expenses of staging a Supreme Court case. According to a brief from Wiley, Kirtsaeng’s lawyers asked for $125,000 for their work on lower courts and $1.9 million for Supreme Court work, including $531,085.25 for “time spent soliciting and coordinating” supporting briefs “from sympathetic business groups.”