D.D.C. grants Icelandic content creator partial summary judgment on liability against Tripscout over reposted social-media works

What the court decided

The document is the public version of a 43-page Memorandum Opinion (Public Version of ECF No. 106) in No. 23-cv-1528 (CRC), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, signed by United States District Judge Christopher R. Cooper and dated September 25, 2026. Some passages in the profits discussion are redacted. The court granted in part and denied in part Tripscout's motion for summary judgment and Steinars' cross-motion for partial summary judgment, with a separate order to accompany the opinion. (Op. pp. 1, 37 to 38, 43.)

The plaintiff, Asa Steinarsdottir (Asa Steinars), is described in the opinion as an Icelandic content creator with over 1 million Instagram followers whose photographs and short-form videos show Iceland's landscape and activities. The defendant, Tripscout, Inc., is described as a U.S. company that owns and operates hundreds of travel-related social media accounts, including @iceland.explore, @outdoor, and @spectacular.norway on Instagram and @iceland.explore on TikTok, and that earns commissions through a linked hotel-booking platform. The operative Third Amended Complaint alleged that Tripscout copied 41 of her copyrighted works on 53 occasions. Infringement No. 9 appeared on an Instagram account, @antarcticaexplores, that Tripscout denies owning. (Op. pp. 2 to 5.)

Earlier in the case the court denied Tripscout's motion to dismiss on limitations and Instagram Terms of Use grounds, Steinarsdottir v. Tripscout, Inc., 2024 WL 1532587 (D.D.C. Apr. 9, 2024), dismissed Tripscout's counterclaims, 2025 WL 485415 (D.D.C. Feb. 13, 2025), and sanctioned both sides for failing to preserve evidence, ruling that a jury may consider the spoliation if the case goes to trial. (Op. pp. 4 to 5.)

Liability

Domestic infringement. The court held that the plaintiff bears the burden of showing a domestic violation of the Copyright Act, applied the display right in 17 U.S.C. 106(5) and the definition of "display" in 17 U.S.C. 101, and followed Spanski Enterprises, Inc. v. Telewizja Polska, S.A., 883 F.3d 904 (D.C. Cir. 2018). It found it undisputed that the works appeared on screens in the United States, held that the record, including evidence that the largest share of Tripscout's Instagram audience is in the United States, would let a jury find that Tripscout targeted American users, and held that uploading by overseas contractors does not defeat a domestic application. (Op. pp. 7 to 12.)

Ownership and copying. Steinars produced timely registration certificates for all 41 works, which the court treated as prima facie evidence of validity under 17 U.S.C. 410(c). The court rejected Tripscout's arguments that her husband, who operated the camera for some works, was the author and that her company was the author under the work-made-for-hire doctrine, 17 U.S.C. 201(b), and held that Tripscout had not shown the knowing inaccuracy that 17 U.S.C. 411(b)(1) requires to invalidate a registration, citing Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, L.P., 595 U.S. 178 (2022). On the work-made-for-hire point, it found no showing that any error was intentional rather than inadvertent. For the posts on the accounts it admits owning, Tripscout admitted it took the works from Steinars' Instagram account and made no changes before posting them. (Op. pp. 13 to 18.)

Volitional conduct. The court read a volitional-conduct (proximate cause) requirement into direct infringement and held it satisfied because Tripscout owned the accounts, gave its contractors actual authority to post, and supplied a playbook for obtaining and reposting creators' content, citing Restatement (Third) of Agency 7.03. The court granted Steinars partial summary judgment on liability for Infringement Nos. 1 to 8 and 10 to 53 and denied Tripscout's motion on Infringement No. 9 because ownership of the @antarcticaexplores account is a disputed fact. (Op. pp. 18 to 24.)

Defenses and damages

The court held that Tripscout is not entitled to summary judgment on its license defense. Instagram's Terms of Use license Instagram, not other users, so the explicit-license theory fails as a matter of law, and the implied-license theory fails under Atkins v. Fischer, 331 F.3d 988 (D.C. Cir. 2003), and in any event turns at least in part on disputed facts about Steinars' emoji reactions to Tripscout's posts. Tripscout challenged ten infringements as untimely under the three-year limitations period in 17 U.S.C. 507(b). The court held that measuring from the filing of the motion for leave to amend saves most of them, and that all ten relate back under Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(B), the ground it called more important, so all claims are timely. (Op. pp. 24 to 29.)

Under 17 U.S.C. 504(b), the court held that the record does not support a lost-sales theory of actual damages, but that invoices for Steinars' paid licensing and content work are enough for a jury to value a hypothetical license, and that Steinars may seek Tripscout's profits attributable to the infringements. Under 17 U.S.C. 412, only Infringement Nos. 8, 9, 24, 52, and 53 are eligible for statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. 504(c). Willfulness is for the jury; the court declined to find the two post-filing infringements willful as a matter of law. Steinars may elect between actual damages and profits or statutory damages at any time before final judgment. (Op. pp. 29 to 43.)