Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Plaintiffs, both food photographers and content creators, sought default judgment for unauthorized online use of 13 food photographs on Canuck Eats Inc.’s food delivery website.

• Standing and copyright ownership for Shen Chen’s images failed on the evidence, because the Just One Cookbook site materials indicated that the company (JOC), not Chen personally, owned the copyright in images 3 to 13, and no written assignment back to Chen was shown.

• The court accepted that Shoichi Matsumoto was the author and copyright owner of images 1 and 2, and found that Canuck Eats Inc. had reproduced those images on its Canadian website without authorization, amounting to copyright infringement.

• Moral rights claims were rejected because, although the images were used in association with a commercial service, the plaintiffs adduced only subjective assertions and no objective evidence of prejudice to honour or reputation, and any cropping or resizing was minimal.

• General damages for Matsumoto were assessed by reference to typical licensing fees rather than the higher per-photo amounts claimed, resulting in an award of CAD $3,000 per photograph (two photographs, total CAD $6,000) plus modest punitive damages of CAD $2,000.

• The court granted a permanent injunction restraining further unauthorized use and misattribution of Matsumoto’s two images, awarded him costs of CAD $2,513.52, and dismissed all other relief, including Chen’s claims.

Facts of the case

Shoichi Matsumoto and Shen Chen are professional photographers and content creators who produce food images for their respective blogs. Matsumoto operates the “No Recipes” blog, where images 1 and 2 in Schedule A are published. Chen is a co-founder and photographer for the “Just One Cookbook” blog, which displays images 3 to 13 in Schedule A. In or around January 2024, both plaintiffs discovered that their food photographs, collectively referred to as the “Works,” were being used without permission on the website of Canuck Eats Inc., an online food delivery service operating at www.canuckeats.com. The images appeared in connection with restaurant listings, including Oshawa restaurants such as Azian Cuisine and Tokushima Sushi. After discovering the alleged infringements, the plaintiffs sent a demand letter on February 15, 2024, but received no response. They commenced an action on June 6, 2024, in the Federal Court of Canada, claiming copyright and moral rights infringement under the Copyright Act and seeking injunctive and monetary relief. Canuck Eats Inc. did not file a statement of defence, placing it in default. This was the plaintiffs’ second motion for default judgment. On the first motion, the court found the defendant was in default but held there was insufficient evidence to grant judgment. On the renewed motion, the plaintiffs relied on supplementary affidavits and exhibits to cure the earlier evidentiary gaps, particularly concerning copyright ownership and typical licensing practices for their photographs.

Issues about standing and copyright ownership

The court first addressed who owned copyright in the Works and thus had standing to sue. Under the Copyright Act, the author is normally the first owner of copyright, and, where copyright is unregistered, presumptions in favour of authorship and ownership can apply unless rebutted. For Chen, the supplementary affidavit stated that he photographed and uploaded images 3 to 13 to the Just One Cookbook blog and attached links to the posts. The blog’s “About” page identified him as co-founder, photographer, and person responsible for business operations, but the “Permissions” page expressly stated that Just One Cookbook (JOC) owns the copyright to all photographs on the site. Each page also carried a notice such as “© 2025 Just One Cookbook. All rights reserved.” Chen’s first affidavit asserted that he personally owned copyright and had not sold or assigned any rights, but this was inconsistent with the site’s own representation that JOC held the copyright. Invoices exhibited on JOC letterhead, showing JOC Incorporated operating from California, reinforced the impression that the corporate entity, not Chen as an individual, was the rights holder. There was no evidence of any written assignment or grant of rights from JOC back to Chen that would satisfy the statutory requirements for standing to sue in his own name. Because standing for copyright infringement must rest on ownership or a written assignment or grant, the court concluded that Chen had not established a sufficient proprietary interest to pursue claims relating to images 3 to 13. By contrast, the evidence concerning Matsumoto was consistent. His blog included a “Photography” page where he claimed copyright in the photographs and advertised licensing terms, and each page displayed “Copyright © 2024 Marc Matsumoto. All rights reserved.” He swore that he had created and uploaded images 1 and 2 and had not assigned or waived his rights. The court accepted that he was both the author and owner of copyright in those two images and confined the infringement analysis to images 1 and 2, treating Chen’s role only in relation to moral rights allegations.

Findings on copyright infringement

The plaintiffs alleged that Canuck Eats directly infringed their copyright by reproducing the Works on its website without permission. The affidavits included screenshots from January 7 and January 11, 2024, showing Matsumoto’s photographs in connection with specific restaurant listings on the Canuck Eats site. The court was satisfied that the images shown in the screenshots were unauthorized reproductions of images 1 and 2 from Schedule A and that no licence had been granted. The evidence also had to tie the infringing website to the named defendant and to Canada. An affidavit of service enclosed a British Columbia corporate profile listing two addresses for Canuck Eats Inc. in Merritt and Burnaby, along with Google business profile entries giving addresses in Nanaimo, British Columbia, and Oshawa, Ontario. A Google search result associated the Merritt address with the Canuck Eats website, and “Merritt BC” appeared as a location tab on the website screenshots, alongside other locations uncovered by the plaintiffs’ corporate searches. Taken together, these corporate records and online links were enough to establish that Canuck Eats Inc. operated the site and that the relevant acts of reproduction occurred in Canada. On this record, the court held that Canuck Eats Inc. had infringed Matsumoto’s copyright in images 1 and 2 by reproducing them on its commercial platform without authorization.

Moral rights allegations and the evidentiary gap

The plaintiffs also invoked moral rights, arguing that their right to be associated with the works and the integrity of the works had been infringed. Under the Copyright Act, an author has a right to be associated with the work by name or to remain anonymous, and moral rights in integrity are infringed if a work is distorted, mutilated, or otherwise modified, or used in association with a product or service, to the prejudice of the author’s honour or reputation. On association, the court noted that none of the images were attributed to another photographer or entity. Some of the Just One Cookbook watermarks remained visible on the images as posted on the Canuck Eats website. Because the use did not attribute authorship to someone else, the right of association was not breached, even if the underlying reproduction was unauthorized. On integrity, the images were clearly used in association with a commercial service—the online food delivery platform. However, a successful claim required both subjective and objective evidence of prejudice to honour or reputation. Matsumoto’s affidavit described concerns about an unapproved association potentially damaging his professional reputation and referenced loss of control over how the works aligned with his brand values. Chen’s affidavit similarly alleged loss of exclusivity, devaluation, missed opportunities, and loss of control. The court treated these statements as subjective perceptions and found no independent, objective evidence—for example, client complaints, reputational harm in the marketplace, or concrete lost deals—linking the website use to actual damage to honour or reputation. The plaintiffs also asserted that Canuck Eats had cropped, resized, and altered the images, but when the court compared the screenshots to the original blog photographs, any cropping and resizing appeared minimal, and the reduction in image clarity was consistent with the overall look of the website rather than a targeted distortion of the photographs. Without objective proof of prejudicial modification or reputational harm, the court declined to find a violation of moral rights under either limb of the integrity provision.

Damages, punitive damages and costs

Because only Matsumoto’s copyright infringement claim succeeded, the remedies phase focused on his losses. He did not elect statutory damages under the Copyright Act; instead, he asked for general damages based on his normal licensing practices, with statutory damages pleaded in the alternative. The court noted that the statutory damages scheme was not clearly more useful in the circumstances and, in the absence of a formal election, confined its assessment to general damages. In cases where precise loss is difficult to prove, general damages may be measured by the licence fee that would reasonably have been charged. Matsumoto’s blog advertised “flexible global licenses starting at $1,000 per photo,” and he submitted two past invoices: one showing an approximate per-photo fee of about $1,620 (although not broken out on a per-image basis and denominated in a foreign currency), and another invoice charging USD $4,625 for a photoshoot involving 15 photographs. He explained that he typically licenses on a per-shoot basis, with global, perpetual usage rights across media, and estimated that a licence for the kind of use made by Canuck Eats would have approached $6,000 per photograph. Chen also provided examples of his own licensing rates, suggesting fees ranging from about $1,000 to several thousand dollars per image, but this evidence could not ground a personal award for Chen because his infringement claim failed on standing. The court inferred that the plaintiffs’ claims were in Canadian dollars and accepted that the two Matsumoto photographs had been used twice each, for a total of four infringing uses, but found no proof that their commercial value had been more broadly diminished. Balancing the licensing evidence and the limited record on scope of use, the court fixed general damages at CAD $3,000 per photograph, awarding Matsumoto a total of CAD $6,000 for infringement of the two images. On punitive damages, the court applied the standard that such awards are reserved for exceptional misconduct that represents a marked departure from ordinary standards of decency. Matsumoto argued that Canuck Eats’ conduct was deliberate, commercial in nature, and continuing, with infringing files persisting on the defendant’s server. The court, however, considered the evidentiary basis “minimal”: the screenshots showed only two dates in January 2024, and the links to the infringing pages no longer worked, limiting proof of duration or concealment. Recognizing that deterrence still had a role but that the record was thin, the court granted a modest punitive award of CAD $2,000. As to costs, Chen, whose claim was effectively dismissed because of standing defects, received nothing. Matsumoto, having succeeded on the motion, was awarded his costs according to the Tariff, in the specific amount of CAD $2,513.52 claimed in his Bill of Costs.

Outcome of the case

The motion for default judgment was granted in part. The court granted a permanent injunction restraining Canuck Eats Inc. and anyone acting with it from any unauthorized reproduction of Matsumoto’s images 1 and 2 and from making any representations that attribute or appear to attribute authorship of those images to the defendant. The court ordered Canuck Eats Inc. to pay Shoichi Matsumoto CAD $6,000 in general damages for copyright infringement, CAD $2,000 in punitive damages, and CAD $2,513.52 in costs. All other relief, including the claims grounded in Chen’s alleged copyright and in both plaintiffs’ moral rights, was dismissed. Overall, Matsumoto emerged as the successful party, obtaining monetary relief and permanent injunctive protection for his two food photographs, while Chen’s portion of the claim failed because he could not demonstrate that he, rather than the Just One Cookbook entity, held the requisite copyright interest to sue.