With Patent Reform not expected to be considered by the full Senate before January 2008, the House appear to be turning its focus to copyright reform.  The Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog has a series of posts on the new copyright legislation (click here and here to read them).  The most recent bill would prevent lawsuits from being dismissed for unintentional errors in copyright registration forms and would give courts discretion to treat compilations as more than one work for statutory damages purposes.  Treating compilations* as multiple works for damages is significant because it increases the potential award for infringing a compilation from a maximum of $150,000 (the maximum willful infringement award for a work) to multiples of $150,000 depending on how many separate works the court determines the compilation to be.

*  Compilations are grouped works such as collections of short stories, magazines with multiple articles or databases.