> I was struck by the fact that the blog post had 43 views. With such low stakes, how did this case make it to federal court and reach summary judgment???

Yeah, fascinating that a 43-view blog post would go all the way to the federal court like this. Surely the plaintiff often has people give up and pay because they fear the case? Otherwise the economics of chasing down copyright violations of this scale surely don't make sense.

It was a prior case that 44 views, not this one. But this one was similar in its low view counts.

Years ago, like around 2000, I had a personal blog where I mentioned a local TV celebrity talking about something. The post was about 90% the topic, but in referencing the guy himself, I said something like, "this guy's cool." The local celeb had a trademarked moniker "The Car Czar," and I used it in reference to him.

I swear, on a busy week I had about 5 people reading that blog and they were all coworkers. The next day, I had a 6th visitor from Los Angeles and got excited. Who was this mysterious visitor? I found out when I opened my email and saw a C&D from Universal's lawyers saying I was abusing the trademark.

I blogged the next day, "Wtf, Universal?" and a few days later, got an email from the local celeb apologizing for the overzealous legal team. He was indeed totally cool about it.

Economics could make sense if they outsourced the enforcement and the enforcement company gets paid regardless of how prolific the usage is. Don't know if that is what happened in this case, but seems plausible.