Statutory damages

The amount of statutory damages can be set on a per-incident basis, such as in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which gives statutory damages of up to $1,000 for a violation of its provisions. Amounts could also be set per day, as in acts proscribing human-rights violations which might specify damages of $1,000 per day. The term also applies wherein damages are a multiple of what the legally entitled payment would have been in the matter, which would be typical for copyright or trademark infringement.

The principle of in pari delicto applies, preventing people from suing others for crimes in which they also are equally at fault.

Intellectual property

In intellectual property cases (relating to copyright or trademark, for instance), it is often difficult for plaintiffs to determine the exact volume of infringement. Thus, statutory damages are often calculated as a multiple of the price for the use of the property, if the infringer had requested and paid for permission. Other statutes may set a fixed amount for each day the violation occurred, for each violation, work, article, or type of good.

• In the United States, statutory damages are set at a minimum of $750 per work, to a maximum of $150,000. In Europe, directive 2004/48/EC on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights bases the damages on, "the amount of royalties which would have been due if the infringer has requested authorisation".
• The Lanham (Trademark) Act provides for minimum damages of $1000 and a maximum of $2,000,000 (if willful) for using a counterfeit trademark in commerce (15 U.S.C. § 1117(c), Lanham Act Section 35(c).)
• The Electronic Communications Privacy Act provides for statutory damages for various wiretap offences of $100 per day, up to $10000.

One area of debate between legal and economic scholars that pertains to the quantification of statutory patent damages is whether the court may rely on information that postdates the determined date of the hypothetical negotiation between the patent holder and the alleged infringer. Some commentators argue that the court should rely on postdate information to deter patent infringement and ensure the patent holder's adequate compensation, while others argue that doing so would "give the potential licensee a free option to infringe, which would discourage the potential licensee from promptly entering into a licensing agreement."