UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

PENSACOLA DIVISION 

CASE NO.: 3:20-cv-02692-MCR-MJF

STEVEN LAMONT MARKOS,

Plaintiff,

v.

FLOAT MY BOAT RENTALS LLC 

AND CAPTAIN CLEVER 

MARKETING, LLC,

Defendants.

DECLARATION OF STEVEN LAMONT MARKOS

I, Steven LaMont Markos, declare as follows:

1. I am over the age of 18 and otherwise competent to testify. I make the 

following statements based on personal knowledge.

2. I own and operate the website National Park Planner, 

www.npplan.com.

3. In 2014, I started National Park Planner to bring to the public firsthand coverage of the over 400 National Parks that make up America’s National 

Park System, including summaries of the parks’ amenities and professional 

photographs of the terrain. 

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4. In 2016, I created the image shown below entitled “Gulf-Island-FL132,” and referred to herein as the “Work.”

5. I registered the Work with the Register of Copyrights on November 3, 

2016 and was assigned the registration number VA 2-022-927. The Certificate of 

Registration is attached hereto as Exhibit 1.

6. Upon creating the Work, I also applied copyright management 

information (“CMI”) to the Work consisting of “© 2016 STEVEN L MARKOS.”

7. I own all rights, title, and interest, including the copyright, in and to 

the Work. 

8. Creating the Work required the use of significant skill in lighting and 

post-production, including: monitoring the environment with regard to atmospheric 

conditions, cloud cover, image location scouting to identify potential photo 

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locations, angles, elevations, accessibility, using advanced photo exposure, and incamera and post-production software used to ensure a common brightness, 

contrast, clarity, color temperature, color saturation, and color tonality.

9. The Work is scarce due to the significant skill in lighting and postproduction required to create the Work. 

10. It is my understanding that Defendant FLOAT MY BOAT 

RENTALS, LLC (“Float”) is a Florida Limited Liability Company that owns, 

operates, and manages the website www.floatmyboatrentals.com and the Instagram 

handle @floatmyboatrentals. 

11. It is my understanding that CAPTAIN CLEVER MARKETING, LLC 

(“Clever”) is a Florida Limited Liability Company that specializes in designing 

websites, optimizing search engines to discover businesses, and social media 

marketing. 

12. On a date after the Work was created, the Work was copied by 

Defendants without my permission, and Defendant Float used the Work on its 

website at www.floatmyboatrentals.com and on its Instagram at the handle 

@floatmyboatrentals. Evidence of Float’s use is attached hereto as Exhibit 2.

13. Defendants have never been licensed to use the Work for any purpose.

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14. Defendants copied and distributed the Work on the internet to 

promote the sale of its goods and services to the public as a boat rental company in 

the Pensacola area.

15. I never gave Defendants permission or authority to copy, distribute or 

display the Work.

16. Through counsel, I notified Defendants of the allegations set forth in 

the Complaint on August 15, 2019 and November 18, 2019. To date, Defendants 

have failed to respond to the notices. Copies of the notices sent to Defendants are 

attached hereto as Exhibit 3.

17. When Defendants copied and displayed the Work, they removed from 

the Work my copyright management information.

18. I never gave Defendants permission or authority to remove my CMI 

from the Work. 

19. The Fair Market Value of the Work, had Defendants requested a 

license to reproduce and display the copyrighted Works on its website without 

attribution, is $895.00 per photograph for the exclusive use during a one-year 

period. I would charge a comparable amount, based on photo-industry standards 

and national market rates for display on 1/4th the screen size, to a company or 

similar commercial website to use the image exclusively for a one-year period.

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20. The ability of Defendants to reproduce, modify, distribute and display 

a copy of the copyrighted Work for their own commercial benefit without 

compensation to me, and their removal of my CMI, greatly impairs the market 

value of the Work since others competing with that business, or in related business 

areas, will not want to obtain а license to the Work if it is already associated with а

competing business. Similarly, potential licensees of my copyrighted photographs 

will not want to pay the license fees if they see other commercial enterprises taking 

and using my photographs for their own commercial purposes without paying any 

fee at all, nor will prospective clients compensate me for a license absent my CMI.

21. The Work has lost significant value to its scarcity by Defendants’ 

willful, continuing dissemination of a CMI free copy of the Work, which could be 

accessed and downloaded by others from its website. The Work is now less scarce 

and less exclusive.

22. The licensing fee alone does not take into account the scarcity of the 

Work.

23. I believe my actual damages for the Work to be $4,475.00 after 

considering a scarcity multiplier of 5X to the licensing fee of $895.00.

24. I believe my statutory damages for the Work to be $22,375.00 after 

considering a willfulness multiplier of 5X to the scarcity multiplier of 5X to the 

licensing fee of $895.00.

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I declare under perjury under the laws of the United States of America that 

the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed on January 5, 2021 at Roswell, GA.

Steven Lamont Markos

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