Indiana Intellectual Property Law News
Indianapolis, Indiana – Nine copyright infringement lawsuits have been filed in the Southern District of Indiana on behalf of Malibu Media, LLC of Los Angeles, California. The lawsuits assert that nine separate unidentified defendants, each identified with only “John Doe” and an internet protocol address, infringed Malibu Media’s copyrighted works.
Frequent copyright litigator Paul Nicoletti has filed another set of copyright infringement complaints in Indiana federal court. The complaints, filed on behalf of adult-content purveyor Malibu Media, assert infringement of the company’s intellectual property. In this latest round, Malibu Media submitted nine new and nearly identical lawsuits for adjudication in the Southern District of Indiana against nine anonymous John Doe defendants. The defendants allegedly used the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol to illegally download, copy and distribute elements of various works of Malibu Media’s copyrighted material. As with all of Malibu Media’s complaints, the copyrights-in-suit cover pornographic videos.
Malibu Media seeks a permanent injunction barring the defendants from engaging in infringing activities; an order by the court that infringing materials be removed from all computers of each defendant; a separate award of statutory damages for each work found to have been infringed and reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs.
Practice Tip: Defendants who fail to appear run a significant risk of having a default judgment entered against them. There is a significant disparity in the dollar amount awarded in default judgments against defendants in copyright infringement cases involving BitTorrent. In two separate cases, Judge William T. Lawrence ordered defendants who failed to appear to pay $20,000 for the copyright infringement that was deemed to have been admitted by the defendants’ failure to defend against the allegations. See here and here. However, in a similar case, Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson ordered an entry of default judgment against a defendant for $151,425, the full amount requested.
Overhauser Law Offices, the publisher of this website, has represented several hundred persons and businesses regarding copyright infringement and similar matters.
These complaints were filed by Paul J. Nicoletti of Nicoletti & Associates, PLLC. The cases have been assigned to Chief Judge Richard L. Young, Senior Judge Larry McKinney and District Judges William Lawrence, Jane Magnus-Stinson, Sarah Evans Barker and Tanya Walton Pratt in the Southern District of Indiana and assigned Case Nos. 1:14-cv-00857; 1:14-cv-00858; 1:14-cv-00859; 1:14-cv-00860; 1:14-cv-00861; 1:14-cv-00862; 1:14-cv-00863; 1:14-cv-00864; and 1:14-cv-00865.