Did I commit copyright infringement against a book company???

[WorriedStudent]

I am a college student and I am in my senior year. I have
just received a letter explaining that I am being sued for copyright
infringement. About a month ago I was searching for the solutions on
the internet for one of my classes textbooks. I found many
places(eBay,Amazon,many personal sites) selling the file versions of
the solutions for my book. I also found a site that had the solutions
listed for free which is where I downloaded it.
After seeing that eBay and Amazon had the same thing listed, that I
now owned for free, I decided to put my file up for sell on these sites.
I knew eBay had strict rules so I was not worried about putting it on
the site because other people had them listed. About a week after I list
the file it is taken off eBay and eBay says that they were contacted by
the company that owned the copyright to the file and it was removed for
copyright reasons. Now I have this letter which explains what damages
they can recover for each file I sold "not less than $750 or more than
$30,000 as the court considers just". The letter goes into more detail
and gives info of what is going on and it also has acceptable
resolutions listed: basically it says that they are willing to settle
early without a lawsuit if I: immediately cease selling(I did); provide
all info I have on others who may be distributing; provide records of
parties I sold to, and if I do it in the future it will be $5000 per c
opy. They also require a payment as compensation for the infringement
and they want me to contact them within 10 business days or I will be
acting in bad faith. I sold around 25 copies of the file for about
$5-$7/file.
I also want to say that I did not know this was copyright infringement
and that I went through the entire file and it does not have the
companies name or any copyrights. Please tell me what I need to do
before I go crazy worrying about this. Do I need to find a lawyer before
I contact them? What information do I need before contacting them? How
much are they wanting to sue for?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

This is a tough question to answer. I'm not sure I can provide one but only say that I think it's very debatable and I wouldn't agree with the letter and would take a vigorous defense. Let's say, for example, I had a book that had questions and I wrote down my own answers. I'm not sure that i could be sued for copyright infringement. However, and this may be the case by you, the answers were in essay question format and a file from the publisher was being sold. That file would be the property of the publisher. I don't know your situation but it is possible you downloaded the publisher's answer book and decided to resell it. The general rule is that you should always assume that whatever you download is owned by someone, somewhere. Best here is to try to first figure out all the facts and then see if you can settle it easily. If you do, make sure you get a settlement release letter from them that releases you from all liability. Good luck and think before you try this next time!