Markos v. Beta Group, Inc. (D. Mass. 22-cv-10353).

Georgia photographer Steven Markos operates a website, National Park Planner (www.npplan.com), that provides first-hand coverage of America’s National Parks and includes photographs of the parks taken by Markos.  Markos says that Beta Group took one such photograph, “Big Cypress-019,” and reproduced the photograph on project deliverables provided to the Town of Yarmouth.  The photograph shows various people walking on a boardwalk at Big Cypress National Reserve in southern Florida.  Beta Group, an engineering and construction management company, apparently included this photograph in feasibility and concept design studies it prepared for Yarmouth for a planned riverside park and boardwalk at Seagull Beach (which is where I caught my personal best striped bass!).  The studies were subsequently published on Yarmouth’s website.  Markos claims willful infringement based on the inclusion of a notice of copyright on the copied photograph, and asks for injunctive relief and actual damages in the form of disgorgement of Beta’s profits on the studies or, in the alternative, statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement.