An email lands in your inbox demanding $1,800 for a photo you used on your site — or a second message a few days later, mentioning something called the “Copyright Claims Board.” Neither one is automatically a lawsuit. Both feel like one. Here’s how to tell which one you’re actually holding, and why that answer changes everything else you do next.

A demand letter over a photo isn’t a lawsuit, so you have time to verify it and respond carefully — but if you receive a formal Copyright Claims Board notice, you have 60 days to respond or opt out, and ignoring it can lead to a binding judgment of up to $30,000.

Not sure which one landed in your inbox? Answer four quick questions below and we’ll tell you which level you’re dealing with.

• I got an email or letter demanding payment
• I got a notice mentioning the Copyright Claims Board
• I already removed the photo

And here’s the question almost nobody thinks to ask first: was that photo even registered with the U.S. Copyright Office before you used it? That single fact — covered in Registration, Damages, and the $200 Rule — has more effect on what’s realistically at stake than almost anything else in the letter.

Letter, Notice, or Lawsuit? Know Which One You Have

Almost every panicked email to a lawyer about a photo starts the same way: “I got sued for using a picture.” Most of the time, nobody has been sued. What arrived is one of three very different things, and the difference determines whether you have a real deadline or just an uncomfortable inbox.

A demand letter is simply a claim of infringement and a request for payment, sent directly by a photographer, an image-licensing company acting on a photographer’s behalf, or a lawyer representing one. It isn’t filed with any court or government agency. Nothing about a demand letter forces you to respond by a specific date, and paying it doesn’t require a judge’s involvement — which also means the amount it asks for isn’t something a court has reviewed or approved. That doesn’t make the underlying copyright claim fake; plenty of legitimate rights holders start here. It does mean you have room to verify the claim before reacting.

A Copyright Claims Board (CCB) notice is different in kind, not just in tone. The CCB is a real tribunal inside the U.S. Copyright Office, and a notice from it means someone has filed an actual claim and had it approved to move forward. This is the one with a hard, legally meaningful clock: 60 days from proper service to opt out. Miss that window without engaging, and the case can proceed without you — including to a default judgment.

A federal lawsuit means you’ve been served with papers from a U.S. District Court. This is the least common outcome for a garden-variety “I used a photo I found online” situation, but it’s also the most serious. Court deadlines are set by procedural rules, not by the sender, and missing them can cost you the case by default. If this is what you’re holding, the honest first step is contacting a lawyer, not reading further down this page.

How to Tell If a Copyright Demand Is Real

Before you reply, pay, or lose sleep, run the letter through a plain verification process. This isn’t about deciding whether the underlying company is legitimate as a business — companies that monitor the web for unlicensed use of photographers’ work and send letters on their behalf, such as the ones people commonly search for by name, operate a real business model that predates the internet. Verification is about confirming that this specific message is what it claims to be, and that the claim itself holds up.

Start with the sender. Does the email come from a domain that matches a real company or law firm, or from a generic address? Does the letter name the specific photo, the specific URL where it appears, and a specific photographer or copyright owner — or is it vague? Genuine claims are usually specific, because the sender needs that specificity to make a case later if you don’t pay.

Next, ask for proof rather than assuming either way. A legitimate rights holder can produce evidence of ownership: the original file, a portfolio listing, a license agreement, or a copyright registration number. You’re entitled to ask for this before paying anything, and a genuine claimant expects the question.

Then check the registration yourself. Anyone can search the U.S. Copyright Office’s Copyright Public Records System by title, author, or claimant name, free of charge. Finding a registration doesn’t end the inquiry, and not finding one doesn’t mean the photo is unprotected — copyright exists automatically the moment a photo is taken, with or without registration. But registration status changes what a claimant can actually recover, which is covered in detail in the Registration and Damages section below.

If the message specifically claims to be a CCB notice, don’t take that claim at face value either way — confirm it independently. A real CCB proceeding has a docket number you can look up directly through the CCB’s own case management system at dockets.ccb.gov, and communication about an active case will also come through the CCB’s own eCCB portal, not only by email. If a message claims CCB involvement but you can’t find a matching, properly served case, that’s a strong signal to keep verifying before doing anything else — but it isn’t the same as proof the message is a scam, so let the verification, not the guess, decide what you do next.

The Copyright Claims Board, Explained

The Copyright Claims Board was created by the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act, signed into law on December 27, 2020, and it began accepting claims in June 2022. It operates inside the U.S. Copyright Office rather than the federal court system, and its entire purpose is to give copyright owners — and the people they claim infringed their work — a cheaper, faster, fully remote alternative to a federal lawsuit.

Participation is voluntary for the person who receives a claim, which is the single most important thing to understand about it. Nobody is forced to have their case heard by the CCB. But “voluntary” cuts both ways: if you don’t opt out within the window the law gives you, you’re treated as having agreed to let the CCB decide the case.

The numbers involved are meaningfully smaller than federal court. On the CCB’s standard track, total damages in a single case are capped at $30,000, with statutory damages limited to $15,000 per work if the work was registered before the infringement began (or within the law’s grace period). If the work wasn’t registered in time, that per-work statutory cap drops to $7,500, with $15,000 as the total ceiling for the case. A smaller-claims track exists for cases seeking $5,000 or less, decided by a single Copyright Claims Officer instead of the full three-member board. Attorney’s fees are generally not awarded at all unless a party acted in bad faith, and even then they’re capped — at $5,000, or $2,500 against someone who represented themselves.

Filing isn’t free for the claimant, either: a $40 fee at filing, plus another $60 once the case becomes “active” — which happens only after the 60-day opt-out window closes without an opt-out. That two-step fee structure is deliberate; it’s meant to filter out claims nobody is willing to actually pursue.

That deadline is the whole ballgame. If you’re properly served and you do nothing — no opt-out, no response, no participation — the case doesn’t just stall. The CCB can issue a default determination against you, up to the full amount claimed, based only on the claimant’s side of the story. CCB determinations are final, with very limited grounds for review, so a default judgment is close to the end of the road.

The Copyright Office’s own published statistics put this in perspective. Through March 2026, 1,920 claims had been filed with the CCB since its 2022 launch, with 67% of claimants representing themselves. Of the cases that reached a final outcome by that point, 25 were decided in contested proceedings, 22 ended in default determinations, 155 settled, and 168 respondents opted out; the largest share of filed claims — 787 — were dismissed at the compliance-review stage before ever reaching a respondent, and 272 more were dismissed because the claimant never completed proper service. In short: most claims filed with the CCB never reach a decision on the merits at all, but among the cases that do get decided, a meaningful share are decided by default — which is precisely the outcome that responding, even minimally, avoids.

Opt Out or Participate? The Real Trade-Offs

Opting out is often described online as an escape hatch, and in one narrow sense it is: it makes the CCB proceeding disappear. But “the case goes away” and “the dispute is over” are not the same thing, and treating them as identical is the most common mistake people make at this stage.

There’s also a common misconception worth clearing up directly: opting out only affects the claim currently in front of you. It is not a standing shield against future claims from the same or a different photographer. A narrow exception exists for libraries and archives that qualify under 17 U.S.C. § 108, which can file a one-time preemptive opt-out covering all future CCB claims against them — but that provision doesn’t extend to small businesses, bloggers, or nonprofit volunteers. If another claim arrives later, it has to be opted out of on its own.

Participating, on the other hand, keeps the dispute inside the capped, no-jury, largely paper-based CCB process — often less expensive and less disruptive than federal litigation, and a process specifically designed for people without a lawyer to navigate. The trade-off is that participating means actually participating: responding to the scheduling order, submitting your side, and following through, because failing to engage after choosing not to opt out is what produces a default determination.

Neither choice is automatically right. A claim resting on a photo you can show was licensed, in the public domain, or used in a way you have a real fair-use argument for looks very different from one where the facts are genuinely against you. That’s a judgment call worth making with real information about your specific situation — which is exactly what a consultation, even a brief one, is for.

Myths That Won’t Protect You

A handful of beliefs come up in almost every conversation about photo copyright letters, and most of them feel reasonable right up until they meet the actual law.

“I gave the photographer credit.” Attribution is not a license. Copyright law gives the owner the exclusive right to decide who can reproduce and display their work; naming them underneath the image doesn’t ask permission, it just tells the reader who to blame. Some specific Creative Commons licenses do accept attribution as their only condition — but that only works if the photo actually carried that license, and you followed its exact terms.

“I already deleted the photo.” Removing an infringing image is a genuinely good step — it limits ongoing exposure and it’s often viewed favorably in a negotiation or by the CCB when considering whether someone acted in good faith. What it doesn’t do is erase the infringement that already happened while the photo was live. A claim can still be based on the period of use before you took it down.

“My site is a nonprofit, and we don’t make any money from it.” Non-commercial use is one of four factors courts weigh in a fair-use analysis — the others look at the nature of the copyrighted work, how much of it was used, and the effect on the market for the original. It’s a factor, not an automatic defense, and fair use is decided case by case on its full facts. This guide can’t and won’t tell you whether your specific use qualifies; that determination is genuinely fact-specific enough to be worth a professional opinion if it matters to your decision.

“I found it through Google Images / on social media.” A search engine’s job is indexing and surfacing content, not licensing it. The fact that an image is easy to find, right-click-and-save, or widely shared says nothing about whether it’s free to use — most photos online remain under someone’s copyright even when there’s no visible watermark or notice.

“I run my own site, so I’m covered like YouTube is.” The DMCA’s safe harbor, at 17 U.S.C. § 512, shields online service providers from liability for infringing material that their users upload — it’s the reason a platform hosting millions of user posts isn’t automatically liable for each one. It does not extend to a site owner who personally selected and uploaded an image to their own blog or page; there, you’re the one who did the uploading, not a neutral platform hosting someone else’s content.

Registration, Damages, and the $200 Rule

Copyright protection itself is automatic the moment a photo is created — no registration required. But two specific legal consequences turn on registration timing, and both matter enormously to how a demand letter should actually be read.

First, under 17 U.S.C. § 412, a copyright owner generally can’t recover statutory damages or attorney’s fees in federal court unless the work was registered before the infringement began, or within three months of the work’s first publication. Miss both of those windows, and a federal claimant is typically limited to actual damages — usually tied to what a reasonable license for that photo would have cost, which is often a far smaller number than the figure in a demand letter.

Second, under the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, a copyright owner can’t even file a federal lawsuit until the Copyright Office has actually acted on the registration application — not merely submitted one. So a claim that leans on the threat of “we’ll see you in federal court” is worth checking against whether a registration exists yet at all.

The CCB uses its own, gentler version of the same distinction: if a work was timely registered, statutory damages there can reach $15,000 per work, up to $30,000 total. If it wasn’t timely registered — including a pending application — that per-work cap drops to $7,500, with $15,000 as the overall ceiling for the case. You can check registration status yourself, at no cost, through the Copyright Office’s Copyright Public Records System, searchable by title, author, or claimant.

You’ll also sometimes see the number $200 referenced online as if it were a standard settlement outcome. It isn’t a negotiation figure at all — it’s the statutory floor a federal court, at its own discretion, may reduce an award down to under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2), and only for a defendant who proves “innocent infringement”: that they neither knew nor had reason to know their use infringed anyone’s copyright. Courts apply this narrowly and rarely, the burden of proof sits with the defendant, and it’s unavailable as a matter of law under § 401(d) if a proper copyright notice appeared on the work you used. It’s a real legal concept, but it’s a possible outcome of a contested court case, not something you can simply cite in an email to lower a bill.

How to Respond (and Negotiate) Calmly

Once you’ve identified which of the three levels you’re dealing with and done basic verification, the next move is usually a short, factual reply — not a payment, and not an admission.

That template does three things at once: it shows you’re taking the claim seriously, it asks for the specific evidence that determines how strong the claim actually is, and it avoids saying anything you might later regret having put in writing.

There’s no reliable “typical settlement” figure to quote here, and any article that gives you one is guessing — outcomes turn on registration status, how the image was used, whether the claimant can actually prove ownership, and plenty of case-specific facts a general guide can’t see. What generally helps is straightforward: responding promptly instead of going silent, keeping the tone factual, and being honest with yourself about the strength of the underlying facts once you actually know them (was it registered, how was it used, do you have any license or fair-use argument at all).

Bring in a lawyer before you go further if any of the following is true: you’ve received actual federal court papers; you’re deciding whether to opt out of a CCB claim and the amount at stake matters to you; you’re not sure whether the work was registered in time to change the numbers; or the other side’s attorney has stopped negotiating and started citing specific statutes at you. The CCB also maintains a directory of law school clinics and organizations offering pro bono assistance for CCB matters specifically, which is worth checking before assuming a consultation is out of reach.

How to Avoid This Next Time

The habits that prevent this situation are unglamorous but genuinely effective. Use images from licensed stock libraries or clearly marked public-domain and Creative Commons–licensed sources, and actually read the license terms rather than assuming “free” means “no conditions” — many Creative Commons licenses require specific attribution wording or forbid commercial use. Whenever you download or purchase an image, save the receipt, license terms, and a screenshot of the source page somewhere you’ll be able to find it years later; a demand letter three years after publication is exactly the scenario where that record proves its worth. Periodically auditing older posts for images you can no longer account for is a small task that catches problems long before a letter does.

What This Isn’t

This guide covers copyright demands over a specific photo — not every adjacent question people search for alongside it. A few related topics worth a separate look:

• Copyright, trademark, and patent protect different things and work differently. See Trademark vs. Copyright vs. Patent for the distinction.
• If you’ve been served with an actual federal complaint, the stakes and strategy shift considerably — see our Intellectual Property Lawyer: Full Guide for finding and working with counsel.
• The Copyright Claims Board is a federal tribunal, not the same thing as your state’s small claims court — see How to Sue in Small Claims Court if that’s what you’re actually looking for.
• If the image in question was AI-generated rather than a photographer’s work, ownership questions work differently from the start — see You Don’t Own the AI Content You Just Created.

FAQ

This article is educational and general in nature, and isn’t legal advice. Copyright outcomes depend on the specific facts of your situation, the registration status of the work involved, and the forum where a claim is brought. If you’re dealing with an actual demand, notice, or lawsuit, consult a licensed attorney about your circumstances.

Last updated: September 25, 2026