The Copyright Claims Board (CCB) is a new tribunal established in 2022 by the Copyright Office at the direction of Congress. The CCB hears “small claims” copyright disputes involving not more than $30,000 in damages. If you receive a valid CCB notice, that generally means that someone is asserting you have infringed their copyright and has filed a claim at the CCB seeking redress. You have the right to opt out of having that claim heard by the CCB, but if you wish to do so, you must opt out on a timely basis. Please, do not ignore a CCB notice. Contact campus counsel or UC’s Office of General Counsel promptly if you receive a CCB notice related to your work at UC.

Why did I receive a CCB notice?

In most CCB cases, the person who initiates the case (the “claimant”) is claiming that the person receiving the notice (the “respondent”) infringed the claimant’s copyright. There are many ways in which members of the UC community use works protected by copyright in the course of teaching, learning, and research, and it is possible that someone will claim that one of these uses was an infringement and file a claim with the CCB.

If you receive a CCB notice, it does not necessarily mean that you have infringed someone’s copyright. The claimant might not be right, either about the facts or about the law. To give just one possible scenario, the author of a book might claim that an instructor infringed their copyright by sharing part of their book online. In such a case, the instructor’s sharing of the author’s work might have been infringement of the author’s copyright; on the other hand, it might have been fair use, or the infringement claim could fail for other reasons.

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