Seen This News? "Statue Of Liberty Stamp Mistake To Cost Postal Service $3.5 Million"

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The parties stipulated that 4,948,761,166 of the Lady Liberty stamps were sold. The final year of sales was 2014. Total amount time period to be 3.24%. Id. ¶ 29. Thus plaintiff applies 3.24% against $2,190,414,155 to arrive at a figure of $70,969,419 for breakage and retention. This is similar to, and actually lower than, the figures that Dr. Isaacson's survey data might suggest. 25 We find that to be a conservative estimate and appropriate for use here. We thus apply a 5% royalty rate against that figure, which results in a $3,548,470.95 sum.

The parties agreed that the total revenue of philatelic products sold amounted to $29,515. Applying a 5% rate, the royalty for those products equals $1,476. That number is added to the $3,548,470.95 along with the $5,000 flat fee for redeemed stamps, for a total unadjusted damages figure of $3,554,946.95. collected for those sales is $2,190,414,155.

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I wonder how $3.5 mil figure was assessed considering the fact the Post Office probably lost money by issuing the forever stamps in the first place.

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This sounds the sort of case where the plaintiff is awarded a nominal halfpenny in damages.

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I am surprised that many folks in this thread seem to have little regard to intellectual property.

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But the "intellectual property"of a trashy copy of the Statue of Liberty? Blimey.

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He testified that, at the time, the Postal Service had already used at least 20 different images of the Statue of Liberty on different stamps in one form or another. He thus searched the sites himself because he was looking for something "different and unique."

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Layne Owens, the manager of stamp development, noted in an email to Stephen Kearney of USPS that, although PhotoAssist had failed to properly identify the subject of the photograph, after looking at it, "it's quite apparent that it had to be" of the Las Vegas replica. PX 85. In response to an inquiry from Mr. Kearney, Mr. Owens represented on March 21, 2011, that, had stamp development "known the origin of the photograph, we would have attributed the photograph as having been taken of the statue in Las Vegas; however, we would still have used this photo." PX 37 at 2. He went on to explain that the Statue of Liberty had appeared on 23 stamps prior to this one and that Mr. McCaffrey selected the image he did because it "was very different from anything we've done before. That was its appeal. . . . There are only so many ways to continue to reinterpret an iconic image." Id.