Secondary liability is liability that is imposed upon a defendant who did not
directly commit the wrongdoing at issue, but whom the law nonetheless holds
responsible for the injuries caused.1 Imposition of secondary liability has been
justified on both efficiency grounds (i.e., as a mechanism to shift costs to those
in the best position to prevent future harm) and on moral grounds (i.e., those
who intend to bring about a harm should be held liable even if another party
was the direct cause of the harm incurred by the plaintiff).2
International agreements currently do not address issues of secondary
liability for infringement of intellectual property rights,3 and international
consensus on this topic is limited at best, even among the major