Opinion ID: 209546
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Determination of the Fees Award

Text: Tavory also argues that the district court abused its discretion in its determination of the amount of fees awarded to NTP by failing to correctly apply the applicable tests. In the Fourth Circuit, the district court must first evaluate whether an attorney's fees award is justified under the four-factor test in Rosciszewski by weighing: (1) the motivation of the parties, (2) the objective reasonableness of the legal and factual positions advanced, (3) considerations of compensation and deterrence, and (4) any other relevant factor. 1 F.3d at 234. The district court here addressed each of these prongs separately. It found that Tavory was motivated to mislead the court, namely by suing based on a facially inadequate copyright registration and providing misleading discovery responses regarding that registration. The district court then found that Tavory's legal and factual positions on his copyright claim were generally meritless and objectively unreasonable because he knowingly filed a reconstruction rather than a bona fide copy of his software with the Copyright Office and deliberately hid its true nature. The district court also 3 We acknowledge that the First Circuit came to the opposite conclusion in Torres-Negron v. J&N Records, LLC, 504 F.3d 151, 164-65 (1st Cir. 2007). There, the First Circuit held that the district court's grant of judgment as a matter of law did not confer prevailing party status when it was based on the holding that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over a copyright infringement claim because of a defective registration. Id. It held that a party cannot be a prevailing party if it has not received a judgment on the merits. Id. (emphasis added). We are not persuaded by the brief treatment of the issue given in Torres-Negron and decline to follow it. Further, we note that the Buckhannon Court indicated that dispositions other than judgments on the merits could also confer prevailing party status. See Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 604 (In addition to judgments on the merits, we have held that settlement agreements enforced through a consent decree may serve as a basis for an award of attorney's fees.). 2008-1090 8 found that his positions were weak because Tavory largely sought to recover for NTP's copying for the purposes of the RIM litigation, which the court held was clearly fair use. The district court found that the compensation and deterrence prong did not support awarding fees, but the court held that its findings on the first two prongs and the additional fact that NTP prevailed on every claim raised by Tavory in the case strongly supported a fees award. Tavory argues this analysis was an abuse of discretion for four major reasons. First, he argues that his discovery responses were not misleading because his indication that he had documents from 1991 evinc[ing] the copy of the software he used for his registration was technically correct since he reconstructed the code partly based on a 1991 fax. But even if his answers were not technically false, the district court focused on the overall misleading nature of his case and found his answers misleading in that context. We are not persuaded this was incorrect. Second, Tavory argues that his registration was valid or close enough to demonstrate good faith because the Copyright Office now permits the use of later versions of software if given special dispensation. But not only was this procedure not available when he filed his copyright claim (thus belying good faith), he has not established why or how he would have won this special dispensation. Third, Tavory argues that his infringement claims were meritorious because NTP's copying of his software for the RIM litigation was not fair use and because he also sought relief for other copying activities unrelated to litigation. But he cites no authority that has held copying for litigation under a protective 2008-1090 9 order is a copyright violation or not fair use, 4 and he does not specify what those nonlitigation activities were. Lastly, he argues that the district court erred by weighing as a factor the fact that NTP prevailed in the lawsuit generally. Even were we to agree with this last argument, Tavory has clearly failed to establish that the district court abused its discretion in its overall determination that fees were warranted under Rosciszewski. After determining fees are appropriate under Rosciszewski, the district court must then consider the twelve factors outlined in Barber v. Kimbrell's, Inc., 577 F.2d 216, 226 n.28 (4th Cir. 1978), to determine the amount of the award. The district court here provided a relatively brief but specific description of its fact-finding as to these factors. It did not make express findings as to every factor. It concluded that most of the fees sought were speculative and awarded $36,899.57 out of the $323,756 sought by NTP. Tavory raises two sets of objections to the district court's determination of the award amount. He first argues that the district court erred by not making findings as to each and every Barber factor. His only support for such a rule is the statement in Rosciszewski that a district court must make specific findings on each of the factors set forth in Barber. 1 F.3d at 234 n.8. This statement, however, is unquestionably dicta. Further, Barber itself holds that any award must be accompanied by detailed findings of fact with regard to the factors considered. 577 F.2d at 226 (emphasis added). Logically then, no detailed findings are required as to the factors not considered. Further, it is illogical to require district courts to mechanically address every factor when 4 His authorities, inter alia, only hold that fair use must be decided on a case-by-case basis and that per se rules are generally improper. See, e.g., Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417, 448 (1984). 2008-1090 10 many clearly do not apply at all—for example, the tenth factor is the undesirability of the case within the legal community in which the suit arose. Id. at 226 n.28. That factor is not relevant here. Barber was not a copyright case, and the Fourth Circuit applies the Barber factors to a wide variety of fee awards; clearly, different types of cases and different factual scenarios will implicate different combinations of the twelve factors. Thus, we do not consider the district court's failure to make detailed findings as to all twelve Barber factors an abuse of discretion. Tavory next argues that the findings that the district court did make were not supported in the record. He first complains that NTP never provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the standard rates it listed in its documentation were actually standard market rates. But the very case he cites eviscerates his argument. In Spell v. McDaniel, the Fourth Circuit upheld a fees award in which the district court had to substitute its personal knowledge and experiences in lieu of substantive evidence to determine if the sought fees were reasonable. 824 F.2d 1380, 1402-03 (4th Cir. 1987). The district court here did the same. Tavory also relies on E.E.O.C. v. Service News Co., but there the district court erred by not making particularized findings as to any specific factors and by not doing a Barber analysis. Serv. News, 898 F.2d 958, 965 (4th Cir. 1990). That is hardly the case here. Tavory's best argument is that the time records submitted by NTP entirely redacted the narratives for the time entries so it is impossible to know whether the billed time was reasonably expended. See Daly v. Hill, 790 F.2d 1071, 1079 (4th Cir. 1986). Although this argument is well-taken, the district court denied most of the fees sought by NTP and instead awarded less than 2008-1090 11 12% of them for a total of merely $36,900. It can hardly be said that this award is unreasonable, particularly when reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard.